Aitre

By RJ French

Aitre is an electronic world, created from downloaded memories, using radical new technology.

Arthur, after a long and successful career, is now trapped by a debilitating, illness. Jim and Jack are trapped in undeserved, long-term prison sentences. They are given the opportunity to transfer to this electronic world, and create a new life,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clive French
• Release date: Mar 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781739137045

Book preview

Prologue

It was just before first light. Mist was weaving in and out of the trees on either side of the narrow, rutted track. The air was earthy and damp, filled with the scent of pine needles, mildew, and mud. Moisture dripped off the ends of the branches and soaked any clothing it touched.

The horses, their bridles muffled, picked their way carefully through the thick mud. Scouts, their dogs on long leather leashes, spread forward of the patrol, to form a silent grey screen. The wind rolling in the tops of the trees hid any small noise.

Arthur wrapped his cloak around him. His leather undershirt chafed and rubbed on his neck, and his shoulders were sticky and cold where the mail shirt made contact. His gauntlets were heavy, wet, and rigid. His sword was loose in the scabbard. His spear stood in the socket at his stirrup. His helmet, battered and dented, was attached to the pommel of the saddle.

The patrol was trailing one of the last remaining bands of Toaks. After the fight at the castle, they had torn their way through farms and villages just outside the North Forest. They left nothing but blackened smoking ruins, livestock sprawled chaotically where they fell, and pits full of mutilated dead. Destruction for the sake of destruction.

The scouts signalled close contact, went to ground and each one moved forward slowly. He halted his troop.

Dogs had alerted the lead scout: Toak sentries were sitting just inside the trees at the entrance to a village. The sentries appeared to be set in pairs, alert and well- trained, just close enough to cover each other. The two in front of him had their heads covered, black cloaks wrapped around their mail shirts for warmth. They were squatting, looking down the track. A horn was ready to sound the alert, knives ready to fend off any enemy at close quarters.

The scouts with two dogs each, moved forward and stopped, poised to attack. The lead scout was within striking distance of the sentries. The scout to his left had reached the same point with her dogs and was waiting for his signal. The dogs, hounds with long, rough grey coats, stood shoulders in line with his waist. Two sets of brown eyes were looking at him calmly and intently. 

He swept his hand forward releasing the dogs; one went for the sentry’s weapon, the other for the throat, bowling him into the undergrowth. The lead scout moved forward and followed through with his knife, punching through the skull just in front of the left ear. The blade went in halfway and stopped. He twisted to the right, pulled it out, wiped it, and checked for the second scout. She nodded. They called in the dogs and clipped them back on their leashes. 

The clearing in front of the village was a hive of activity, but they could see no one was heading their way. They melted back into the trees and re-joined the troop.

With all the scouts back, the troop moved forward.

A part of the forest floor moved, and a lone figure covered in leaves and camouflage moved forward into the treeline. He took up a position with a clear view of the village, but far enough back to avoid getting caught by an early riser looking for a place to relieve himself. 

He lay head down, not stirring, his rifle and its scope lying beside him. After a few minutes, he lifted his head and made sure that he hadn’t been seen, then slowly undid a pouch and removed a set of binos. After adjusting the lens, he started scanning the village. The Toak band was busy packing up gear, finishing breakfast, and preparing to move. Their black clothing, pierced by the odd glint of mail, made them look like a murder of crows. Some carried bows, most carried spears. They had swords strapped to their waists and axes on their backs. They spoke little, each one working their own early morning routines. At the edge of the clearing, a group was forming into a line, laying down packs and squatting, ready to move.

As he watched, he was aware of the stench; he could see the outline of a newly dug trench, a leg sticking up from the far corner.

After a few minutes, he sensed a change of atmosphere. He felt, rather than saw, that Arthur’s troop had arrived. A certain frisson went through the Toak band. Some looked anxiously to the woods. The group stirred. The murmur stopped. All was intensely quiet. 

Soundlessly, the longbowmen moved up, a line of green and brown, at the edge of the wood. They calmly set out a row of arrows in front of them. Mounted light archers, green surcoats now in tatters, armed with recurve bows, sat quiet, with little movement. The forward troop leader turned and looked at Arthur. His grey cloak had now gone, and his mail shirt gleamed dully in the morning light through the large tears in his green surcoat. His face, framed by the rim of his helmet and a black beard, was grim and determined. All eyes turned towards him. He nodded. A line of bows was bent, arrows drawn back with a creak, and released with a thud.

The lone watcher had a grandstand view as a line of arrows curled up high, appeared to hang for a second, then plunged down into the thicket of people. 

Then five more waves followed in quick succession, three waves in the air at the same time. On the ground it was chaos, there was a hissing and thuds followed by grunts and screams. Figures seemed to melt into the grass.

Commands erupted. The black swollen mass seethed, slid and metamorphosed into three lines, spears in front, bows to the rear. It raised a swathe of shields to cover against the falling arrows. Bowmen stepped back and prepared to return fire. 

Then there was a thunder of hooves. A screen of mounted archers swept down, riding close to the lines, loosed, and retreated, rolling away like green waves against the seashore. The volleys of arrows plunged into the leading lines, directed at the heads and arms of the spearmen. Before the black mass could return fire, longbowmen targeted the archers. 

Minutes had passed. A diamond shape of mounted spearmen rode out of the forest. It curled around behind the screen of mounted archers and came diagonally at the right face of the black line at a steady canter. Briefly, another wave of mounted archers swept back in front of the diamond, focusing their fire on the breach point. The longbowmen stepped up their rate of fire.

The diamond contracted. They slowly and gracefully lowered their spears and charged. There was a drumbeat of heavy hooves, clods of earth and grass flew up in chunks. There was a massive clash of metal as they thundered into the black lines. As the diamond moved forward, it expanded with new spears fanning out into a broad line that swept down the remaining ranks. Spears were exchanged for sword and axe, and suddenly it was all over.

Mounted archers swept past into the village, bringing down any escaping black-clad figures.

Afterwards, the village was cleared hut by hut, and the Toak dead piled high and burned, while the villagers were laid to rest. They razed it all to the ground, clearing the area for a new village at a later stage.

Finally, at the edge of the wood, Arthur squatted, talking to the camouflaged figure.

How did that go, Arthur? It looked good from here.

Not too many injuries. That’s the last of the Toaks, thank God. We will mop up anyone left who escaped from the village and keep a presence here for a week. Afterwards we will pull back to the castle.

The figure on the ground nodded.

I put down a small group to the West of the village, so you’ll need to clean that up. I will pack up and see you in a few days. What’s the plan for you?

Hopefully, some R&R – we’ll see. I don’t know how to thank you, Glen. He grasped his hand: We would not be here if not for you and your team.

The camouflaged figure stood up clasped him. Take care Arthur, see you next week. He turned and moved off, back into the trees.

Chapter 1 The hospital

The small ward was dark; his bedside night light gave out a faint yellow glow which lit the three other beds and curtains. The odd snore, grunt or teeth-grinding from the other occupants punctuated the silence. He moved and caught his knee and hip; the nerve screamed out in pain, this time the spasm didn’t end but just kept on coming. He tried to move the leg into a position to ease it, but the movement was too quick. His shoulder and right elbow kicked in as well and he let loose an involuntary grunt.

A short nurse dressed in a pale blue uniform looked up from her desk and went to his bed. She found the little blue machine and pressed the button injecting two units into him via his drip, then checked the time and made a note of the volumes. 

His body relaxed back into the bed and his eyes returned him to the room. His face was white and transparent, his grey beard thin and wasted. She took a flannel and wiped his face and checked for urine and faeces. No words had passed between them. She smiled at him, wrote up his notes, and left.

He was exhausted, angry, and had had enough. This had been getting worse over the last week as the wards became cooler and the dampness in the air increased with the onset of autumn.

The indignity of being checked over for bodily functions no longer worried him, as long as his friends and relatives were not present, but the increasing lack of mobility and the need for pain medication were wearing him down. 

The endless days confined to the ward with its cloying, airless warmth, and its impersonal complement of people - patients, relatives, doctors and cleaners - made for a grey monotonous life punctuated with pain. What was worse was the knowledge of the inevitability of this continuing, with an increasing reliance on his pain drip, and on others to keep him alive.

The following morning, after the daily re-organisation of his ward, while the nurses made his bed, he completed his long frustrating trip with his Zimmer frame to the toilet and the sluicing area. Once he had finished his spray down, he made the long stagger back. The nurses helped him back into bed and propped him up with pillows. 

As soon as he lay down, he felt the surge of another wave of pain. He moved his body, but the pain continued. 

His knee spasmed again. He grabbed a small cardboard bowl. The pain in his shoulder kicked in again, and he retched into the bowl, the splash spraying the end of his bed.

Chloe, experienced and focused, had been a nurse on the ward for the last three years. She had been working on a patient in the next bed and had reacted at once to the sound and smell of the vomiting. She closed the patient’s pad, turned him on his back, straightened the pillows and was on her way out of the cubicle before the panic button’s ping. Expressionless, she came out from the other patient’s bedside, at once pulling the curtains around Arthur.

She quickly straightened Arthur’s bedclothes and checked his heart rate and breathing. 

He was pale and shivering, his face screwed up with pain. She sat him up, gently wiped his face, ripped off the bedspread, and bundled it up. A quick look told her that the pain relief was empty. The auxiliary nurse arrived, she briefed her and went for the ward sister. Together they unlocked the cabinet and got a refill. The ping of the control told them the first shot was underway, and after a minute or two, Arthur relaxed, the tension slowly leaving him. His eyes opened and once he registered it was Chloe, his eyes wrinkled.

Thanks Chloe, not good. She smiled back, and after helping the auxiliary to clean up, talked to the ward sister.

That is not just arthritis, Mary. Before all of this, Arthur was fit, I think something else is going on. The ward sister wrote up the notes, requesting urgent duty doctor review.

It was later that morning, when Chloe dropped a letter on his bedside table: Arthur, you had a visitor, a Hamish Tremnade. Apparently, you were expecting him?

Arthur sat up, Shit! Oh, sorry Chloe, I forgot about him. I really needed to see him. 

I know Arthur, but you were struggling at the time he arrived, and both he and the sister thought it better for him to come back later. Anyway, he sat down and wrote you this letter.

Thanks Chloe.

He rolled over, opened it:

Dear Arthur,

I came to visit you this morning but was told that you were suffering a setback and really could not see me. We were due to meet during the selection and interview phase for the contract, but I got called away to deal with a problem.

We are all devastated how, in such a short time, your illness has upended your world like this.

Your company, you, and Nick, were exactly what we were looking for to take our company forward into the public domain. We went through a long and thorough procedure and were delighted to award you the contract.

Unfortunately, we could not give you much of an idea of what the project was all about, what we were creating, as it is very sensitive and highly confidential. But I hope you saw enough of us to give you confidence in moving forward. I know that you have signed all the contractual paperwork and the confidentiality agreements.

You may have thought that your illness would have put a stop to the contract, but that is not the case. In fact, we believe that your position could actually be an enormous opportunity and that our project can help you. It is exactly what we are working on. In addition, Nick working with you would be an added strength. We can support him where necessary.

Can I suggest Nick visit with us? We can run through everything, and he can report back to you. We will set up everything with him and keep you informed.

Meanwhile, I hope your situation improves, and you get this awful disease back under control.

Wishing you all the best,

Hamish Tremnade.

Chapter 2 The project

Nick was staring out the window of his South London apartment. A couple of kids were kicking a ball against a wall in the street. It was a blustery, cold, but sunny morning, white clouds moving steadily across the sky. He took another sip of coffee and turned to his phone. The daily flow on his chat from his father had stopped suddenly two weeks ago, when he was devastated by his arthritis. He spotted a message from the Bloomfield Trust project. 

He had called the project and alerted them to Arthur’s illness and given them full details of their changed circumstances. He had added that he understood they could no longer fulfil their contract. Given all the work that they had done, he was expecting a huge push back and maybe a legal challenge. Made worse by the contract being signed only days before. 

The message was from one of the project engineers, Alice Morgan. It said that Hamish Tremnade, the CEO of the Bloomfield Trust, had been to the hospital to meet with Arthur, but unfortunately, he was too unwell to see him. She referred him to a letter attached at the bottom of the message. Would he be able to visit Barramour House at the project centre and then the base the day after? The address was the same as in the contract documents. 

Delighted and relieved, he replied, saying he would be there.

A week later, Nick found himself in a taxi after being picked up from the station. The weather was autumnal with the leaves turning yellow and orange. It was a bright sunny day with the ever-present threat of rain and a clear, cool, breeze. Barramour House stood off from the road and backed on to a park with woodland and lakeside walks. There was a long drive up to it bordered by rhododendrons. The building was an old sandstone manse fronted with large bay windows separated by pillars.

The entrance was an oak-floored front porch, with a strong smell of floor polish. There was a piano on the right and a battleship model in the window. He went through glass panelled doors into a large open dining room lined with wood panels and a row of sliver cups and plates running from left to right. 

He stopped as a door opened on the left, and a woman entered. Like a figure from a nineteen fifties magazine, she was wearing a long tweed skirt with sensible shoes. Her hair was grey, shoulder-length, and had a wave of curls at the bottom. She was in her late forties; her eyes had that deep intelligent look with laughter wrinkles in the corners.

 She came out, coughing slightly, and ushered him through into a drawing room. The chairs were large and deep, with the thick covers covered in green and red floral patterns. The room had two sets of large windows looking out onto the lawns and flowerbeds.

Nick, great to meet you. Ursula, I am married to Hamish. We are sorry about your father. That must be terrible for you both, she said. How bad is it? But wait: first things first. Can I get you a cup of tea?

No, I am fine for the moment. I had a couple of coffees on the way up, thanks.  

She nodded and smiled. Hamish will be down in a minute. He has just had to answer a call from London. Please sit down. How is your father doing?  

Twenty minutes later, he was still talking when the door opened and a white-haired man with clear blue eyes entered. Ursula smiled, coughed, and excused herself.

I’ll just check on the patients.

He walked towards Nick, hand outstretched. Good morning. Hamish. Is it Nicholas or Nick?

Good morning, Hamish, he grasped and shook the outstretched hand. It’s Nick.

It’s good to meet you Nick, I hope I have not kept you waiting long? Was your journey was straightforward, and Ursula has been looking after you? Nick smiled and nodded.

Please, would you mind following me? 

He turned left out of the drawing room and entered what looked like a dining room with a beautiful oak floor and a large mantelpiece down the end. They walked across towards a door on the far side, Hamish turned a key and turned on the lights. It was a lecture room with a long table down the length of the room with chairs running down each side. 

Come on in, Nick, please make yourself comfortable. It’s a bit formal, but we have a very useful gadget here that will help me explain a bit about what we are doing. 

He turned and smiled at Nick. He was about sixty, but he still looked fit and healthy, was slightly shorter than him, and wore a tweed jacket which gave him a schoolmaster’s look.

Nick smiled back and then took a seat. Hamish sat beside him and moved the chair back, so they were face to face.

First, apologies again. I was supposed to meet you the last week of the assessment, but we had a bit of a problem down at the project centre and I couldn’t really leave. But, formally, welcome to the project, we would like to keep the contract exactly as it is. We can see if we need to add someone else to help you, now your father is unwell. By the way, I am very sorry to hear about his illness. I tried to visit with him in hospital, but, unfortunately, he was too unwell to see me. Did you get my letter to him? 

Yes, many thanks for that: for the letter, and for keeping us on contract. It’s been quite a shock, the speed of all of this and how hard it’s hit him.

Hamish, with a look of concern: It’s a vile disease I’m afraid, and he will find it difficult, which is why I am very keen to show you what we can do with this project. We, as you know, did a great deal of work looking at you and Arthur when selecting a company for the job. Unfortunately, we could only tell you a little about what we are doing, as it is highly confidential. I’m sure, as we progress today, you will understand why. Just to confirm: we have now signed contracts, and you have completed the security vetting required by the government and signed the secrecy agreement?

Yes, that was all done a week ago. We had a team of lawyers down who went through everything.

And you are happy in yourself about the terms of the contract and your role?

Nick replied: Well, all we know is that there are three entities in the project: the government, Ioventra and yourself. Our role is to review the project and understand how it works. Then find any key areas where there may be PR, legal, and marketing difficulties when launching the company. Ultimately, our task is to bring a private company through from a secure, tight project, to going public. We know it is a biotech company looking for a radical solution to end-of-life medical conditions and prison reform.

That is correct. We could not reveal more than that, and once you see the project, you will understand why. 

Hamish turned away, went down to the end of the table, and pulled out what looked like a tea trolly. It had a keyboard on top and a bank of switches down one side. He turned to Nick and smiled.

Bear with me, it will all seem strange. We designed the project to re-habilitate two sorts of people: people debilitated from severe injury, long-term disease or old age, and certain people currently serving long-term prison sentences. We do this by taking them out of our real living world and putting them into an electronic living world.

He touched a screen, and a hologram of a box appeared hovering over the tea trolley. It was an image of a desktop computer.

This may be over simple, but it’s the essence of everything we do. This is a conventional computer, but it needs ancillaries to communicate: a camera or screen to give it sight, a speaker to give it speech, a microphone to allow it to hear. Or if possible, devices to allow it to taste or smell. As he mentioned each device, cables were attached to the box.

So now you can play a conventional game. He pressed a button and the screen on the computer lit up. Nick saw a land of dinosaurs and heard the hero on horseback chasing one of them.

If I unplug anyone of these cables, you will lose one of your ways to communicate. To demonstrate, he pulled the speaker cable, and the sound cut out. He looked at Nick, who nodded, uncertain of where this was going. 

The human brain is the same. It’s a biological computer. Its cables are in fact the nerves that pass through the head or the body, but are still conduits for signals. If we block any of them, we lose the sense.

Now see what happens when we interfere with this system. The screen showed the cables to each sensor cut, and the game stopped. 

Now, we are back in the box again with the computer or brain inside, unable to sense its environment.

Then he attached a new mouse, camera, and speakers to the cable stubs. A new game fired up. This time they were in a meadow and knights were jousting against each other with an audience of people, flags flying, the screams of the crowd.

This is what we are doing. Imagine the dinosaur world is the real everyday world which we have bypassed and isolated. We have now attached our computer or brain to the new reality of the medieval world.  

He swivelled in his chair and looked at Nick calmly.

So, we can place a person in a new world merely by hooking up to his or her senses, blocking the ‘real signals’ and replacing them with new signals showing a different world. This is not a radically new concept, it’s how games work currently. However, with the added senses of touch, feel and taste, we can make it real. Currently, with the human body, we struggle to interface with actual mechanical devices, artificial organs or limbs. We have to connect with the complexity of chemical signals, blood supply, minute nerve connections that is the human body. With a virtual entity that is not needed, the brain assumes all of that.

He turned everything off and looked at Nick.

This is the most important part, though; this is not a video game. Games have no part in this. We have designed our worlds to be as real as possible. This is a new reality, a new life. We move people into them on a temporary basis, and then, as soon as possible, permanently. They cease to be in this world. They are officially dead.

Hamish paused and looked at Nick, waiting for it to sink in. Nick was stunned. The entire process - the project, the people, the contract - had suddenly become very real.

What about the body? How does that function? What happens to it once they make the move? said Nick.

We can electronically block or replace nerve signals temporarily using headsets and plugging into nerve centres. For the longer term, we introduce transmitters and blockers directly into the body of people transferring on a regular basis, such as staff or long term transferees. Finally, we permanently transfer consciousness into their other life presence, or ‘Avatar’. Our medics keep bodies alive through tubes as if they were in a coma. Once they have successfully transferred, their bodies are handed over to the undertaker.

He paused, and once again gave Nick a minute to think, then continued.

In this session, I just wanted to introduce you to the project before you saw our first prototypes. After this, I would like you to visit our project centre where you can get a bit more detail on these processes. It will help you understand who we are aiming this at and how.

Nick stopped and asked: Just a couple of questions while they are in my mind?

Hamish nodded.

 So, a human brain is set up to receive pre-recorded signals. Where do these come from? How are they made?

Hamish replied. Good question. We have recording sensors inserted into a volunteer’s body, near each of the main sensory nerve paths, sight, hearing, taste, touch. These feedback to a data base. We record the signals from the volunteers. The volunteers can do anything from surfing, climbing mountains, swimming in lakes, riding horses. Everything that you could imagine. They record the activity and the scenery.

Nick thought for a moment. So, these would be raw random data signals. How do you create worlds from these?

Hamish replied: We find that after an initial delay, any brain readily deciphered signals from another brain. A programme selects the suitable recording and then weaves them into an environment. From these, an AIQB (they are the programme generators in each world), can create a detailed world that you can expand whenever needed. You will see what I mean at the project centre. By using actual signal data which you can easily store, the library of information signals that an AIQB can draw from is immense.

He hesitated, then added.

"We use this skills and activities database to provide skills or trades to gift to people in a new world. We get real life artisans, musicians, craftsmen and women to record all of their activities. When played back through someone’s senses, they feel they are actually doing the work, playing the music, or creating a work of art."

He stopped, then stood up. OK, Nick, let’s see what we are talking about.

He smiled and ushered him out of the room. They left the briefing room, crossed over the dining room and went up a large wooden staircase under which nestled a full-size snooker table. There were a couple of smaller billiard tables and creaking oak floorboards when they reached the landing. They eventually entered a large corner room in which, behind a thick panel of glass, two bodies were suspended from the ceiling. 

Steel rods protruded from their bodies – the frames to provide support - which were encased in a suit made from a thin micro-mesh material, with just their eyes, noses and mouths protruding. One was female, the other one male. Air circulated gently around their bodies. Umbilicals dropped from an attachment in the ceiling and connected to six points on each suit. The thickest split to either side of their heads.

Nick was stunned and appalled: it was grotesque. 

Nick, I know you will find some of this very difficult. This is what we call ‘framing’. The steel rods allow us to support and rotate the body, give minor stimulations to the muscles, and maintain the bodily functions to keep the patient alive. The frames are held in a centralised location where the air is purified and conditioned and circulated around the bodies. Every now and again, they spray the bodies down and dry them. This is our temporary suspension prior to transference. Nick nodded. 

This is Graham and Ruth. They are both very much alive, as I hope you will find when you meet them. I will let you make up your own mind.

A prematurely grey technician was working at his desk, surrounded by banks of computers, wearing a similar suit, with cables connected into a half helmet. Hamish tapped him on the shoulder. The tech turned, removed his half helmet and smiled.

This is Jean-Luc. He shook Nick’s hand. Nick noticed that Jean Luc’s eyes were tired, his face slightly greasy from sustained time indoors.

Hamish continued. He is the development tech for these two and their world, which you will soon see more of. 

Jean-Luc replied, Hi Nick, apologies, but we need to keep at this. We are in the middle of a fresh development. He spoke with a slight French accent, and replacing his helmet, he turned back to his work.

Jean-Luc monitors their world. This is where we design and refine new techniques that are developed at our major centre. The work is intensive now, because we have just installed an updated system and a few mods. So, we must watch it carefully and keep on top of it until it has settled down. Nick, I noticed your reaction when you saw them. Please bear with me. We will explain all. I am sure that you will have lots of questions, but let’s just go next door.  

They went out into the corridor and turned left into