The Dead Speak Ill Of The Living (The Dead Speak Paranormal Mysteries Book 1) (3 page)

  
Joe looked around, concluded he really was alone, and debated whether to dial
the computer’s intranet outside and pick up the lunchtime news discussion,
which would be a flagrant breach of rules, and would give him something to
listen to instead of the CD player with its strange selection of music. Joe
decided not to do that, but as the thought was in his mind he accidentally
clicked on the icon for the built in music player and as the computer flashed
that into life…

  
“Wait, Joe, wa…”

  
…Joe clicked it off as soon as it began. Then he froze. Had he just heard
something? Looking round, finding no one, Joe turned back to the screen. He was
sure he’d heard a voice, one saying his name. An odd voice, not exactly human,
almost digital.

  
Looking at the screen, Joe went over things in his head. He’d clicked the music
player into life, he’d heard a voice, he’d turned the music player off and the
voice went. So… so had the computer just played a voice? A voice which knew his
name?

  
Joe returned his hand to the mouse, a thought in his head which couldn’t
possibly be right. Data was coming into the computer, the computer wasn’t
interpreting it. But something played…

  
A click bought the music player up again, and this time Joe didn’t turn it off.

  
“Oh thank Christ for that,” came a voice from the monitor’s built in speakers,
which were usually filled only with the bleeps of menus opening and closing, “I
thought I’d be stuck here for days before anyone worked it out.”

  
Joe looked under the desk, and back at the computer, before asking “Who are
you?”

  
“I’m Professor Joanna Jones.”

  
“And… and how are you talking? Are you on Skype or something?” Joe thought he
knew the answer, because this machine had no microphone to take his voice away,
which left the tantalising possibility of the box.

  
“Ah, yes, I, err, well here it is. I’m dead. I guess you could say I’m a ghost.
I died in this building, and I guess you could say I’ve been haunting this
building. Watching what’s happening, following the development along. And then
one day you put a box of quantum foam down, powered it up, and I discovered I
could mould it. Not really deliberately, not really repeatedly, but as I was
able to feel the point where it interacted with both me, a ghost, and your
world, the physical parts of the box, okay, it moulded itself, and I realised I
could talk through it. Unfortunately your programs were looking for something
else, not a voice, and I’ve been stuck hoping something tried the right
output.”

  
Joe leaned back, nodding politely. “You’re a ghost, and we’ve built a machine
that ghosts can talk through?”

  
“Yes!”

  
Listening to the synthesised voice, Joe felt he was on a dividing road in his
life. He could get up and walk away, and everything would be normal. Or he
could stay here and accept that things had just got very unusual, and would
take him to similarly bizarre places. But what would a fan of Doctor Who do,
when faced with his own remarkable box?

  
“I just need to make a phone call,” Joe said, pulling out his phone.

  
“To call Scott?”

  
“Not yet, ah, yes hello, Doctor Monroe, it’s Joe... Very well thanks… I have a
quick question. Where there people in this lab before us?.. Okay, and did any
of them die?... Yes, I did say die, it’s just a casual question about… oh, one
did, a Professor Jones, heart attack…. Thanks very much… oh, yes, the meeting
with Dee went very well… no, she’s not asking about fatalities… no, really.
Okay, thanks.” Joe switched the phone off.

  
“So you believe me?” the voice asked.

  
“Yes, yes I do. But what do we do know?”

  
“Call Scott back, call your team back, you’ve just made one of the greatest
breakthroughs in scientific history.”

  
Joe had literally run out of the room to go and fetch Scott, and the group had
moved as quickly to come back in. However, it then took fifteen solid minutes
for Scott to abandon his initial assumption of being made a fool of, check the
place for TV cameras, and generally think he was the rear end in some scam. But
it was worth his increasing anger, and Joe’s equally increasingly vehement
defence, to see the look on Scott’s face when he realised it was true, he
really was talking to a dead professor.

  
“Sorry Joe,” he said meekly. Joe, on the other hand, did not take the olive
branch, but continued staring bitterly at the doctor.

  
“He said sorry,” Jane tried, ever the teacher’s pet.

  
Silence continued, so Jones broke it up. “Shouldn’t you be cracking out the
Champagne?”

 
“Good idea!” two of the others shouted with certainty and began to move towards
the door.

  
“Wait, wait,” and Scott put a hand up.

  
“You still don’t believe me.” It was a question from Joe.

  
“No, I accept that this is a ghost talking. But you know what happens in our
profession if we say ghost, or spirit, or anything like that. And you know many
devoted people have spent years in laboratories trying to talk to spirits. I am
prepared to accept there have been a few interesting results, but they were
never reproducible outside of a lab, and for us that means they didn’t happen.
So, here’s what I propose. Before we celebrate, before we even tell anyone, we
have to test this system outside the lab. More ghosts, more data, more proof.”
He paused, looked at the box, and added “with all due respect Professor.”

  
“That’s fine,” came the voice, “as the first my place in history is secure.”

  
Joe was looking at the tangled mass of screens, wires and equipment. “You want
us to take this outside?”

  
“Yes. We’ll have to build a portable version. The box is small, everything else
can be too. Look at all these screens, we can probably use something like your
phone instead.”

  
“I’m sure the budget can run to a phone.” Joe would have gladly given his to
the cause, but he’d also like it back, and he knew that wouldn’t happen until
Scott was dead.

  
“Yes, of course. I’m sure we’ll be able to cobble something workable together.”
Which, Joe reflected, was probably how they came to be in this situation in the
first place.

  
“Am I right in thinking Professor,” Scott began, “that you don’t really know
how you created this box?”

  
“Correct.”

  
“And we can’t open it, or scan it, or probe it in any way because the quantum
structure would change and it might break.”

  
“Aaaahhhhh” the machine replied, realising the problem. “We can’t reproduce the
box.”

  
“No,” and Scott rubbed his chin. “We have made a breakthrough, we know it’s possible,
but we can’t reproduce it. Or tell others how to.”

  
“So have we really made a breakthrough at all?” Jane queried, more to go along
with the doctor than believing.

  
“Yes,” Joe interjected forcefully. “We now know it can happen. And if it can
happen, then other people can keep pushing until they find it. The answer is
here, we know where to look.”

  
Scott smiled, the moment of panic gone. “Exactly. But this does mean one
thing.”

 
“Yes?”

  
“Don’t anyone damage that box. It’s all we have.”

  
Dee sat in front of her laptop, trying to work out a story while being unmoved
by the rain hammering on the window behind her. She always found heavy rain
creepy, and she didn’t know why. The thing about writing for a local newspaper
is that most readers are after houses for sale, events to go to, stories about
them and their loved ones, and occasionally even some news. What they didn’t
want was an article about a science lab in the town, and so Dee knew the only
people who’d read her article – besides the staff, see point three – was some
arsehole who’d be looking for complaint letter fodder.

  
All of which might have made the more jaded journalist write any old shit and
submit it, and that’s exactly what many of Dee’s colleagues did. But she was
young and still had some semblance of pride, and the staff had seemed very
nice, and she wanted to do her best. So here she was, trying to explain the lab
in terms an arsehole would understand. She’d already stressed that no animals
were involved as they seemed very keen on that and spent ten minutes wondering
if she should transition to being science writer for a major publication, as
her thoughts always drifted to the majors, but that seemed as far off as the
moon, but if she just…

  
The phone rang, a series of staccato stabs, and Dee checked the caller ID. No
one she knew, but as a journalist you had to answer, so she flicked it on.

  
“Hello, Dee Nettleship.”

  
“Hello Miss Nettleship. You don’t know me, but…” Dee’s radar went off, please
god, Allah, the creator, whoever, be something interesting, “…I have something
you should know. Call it a story.”

  
“I am always looking for stories.” Please don’t be a pervert, please don’t be a
pervert, please…

  
“Do you have a secure email address?”

  
“Sorry?”

  
“I have files to send you, liberated from the computers of the laboratory you
have recently written about.”

  
So not completely in the know then. Hang on “what kind of files. Is something
dodgy going on?”

  
“Let’s just say you can break the story of your career. And many others.”

  
Which struck Dee as strange, as the scientists she’d seen didn’t seem all that
devious, but something bad must be afoot. An email address was duly given, and
as the caller hung on the phone Dee logged in to find a collection of documents
zipped together. A quick look revealed it was about the quantum brain project.

  
“Okay, which one am I looking for?”

  
“Anything from the last week.”

  
“Do I get to find out who you are?”

  
“I’d prefer not.”

  
“Right, this document is about… err…” It couldn’t be. “This suggests, to me, on
a first glance, that they’re building a machine to talk to the dead.”

  
“Bingo!”

  
“Oww, no need to shout in my ear.”

  
“Sorry. But that’s precisely it. They’re not building, they’ve built. And
they’re not telling anyone yet.”

  
“You expect me to believe there’s a machine that can talk to the dead?”

  
“But you have all the documents?” The voice sounded hurt.

  
“I could write a load of documents and send them off to anyone.”

  
“Err… look at the notes, the development, the evidence!”

  
Whoever this voice was, they clearly had been expecting total acceptance of
their claim. Then Dee narrowed her eyes and looked at the phone. “This is
clearly a major story, but why are you so keen to see it in the press? It’s not
bad at all.” But if this wasn’t about Scott claiming to have invented
something, it’s a man trying to preempt Scott, so did the machine exist after
all? The motive didn’t seem to be bullshit artist, unless the target was to
make Dee look silly. And Dee didn’t really have any enemies she couldn’t flat
out just kick in the balls, so they wouldn’t dare.

  
The voice paused. “I have my reasons.” Dee closed one eye and screwed her face
up. If she was pushed, she’d guess if the machine was unveiled now Scott
wouldn’t have enough evidence and would get laughed out. So this caller was
trying to destroy Scott. So Scott had a machine. “Will you look into it?”

  
“Yes, I will,” Dee confirmed, “thank you very much.”

  
If she was expecting a goodbye she didn’t get it, and the line went dead,
leaving Dee looking at the screen.

  
On the one hand, she did indeed have the story of her career. On the other, she
faced the same problems as the doctor: no one would ever believe the device,
unless it could be scientifically proven, and it couldn’t really at this point,
so they’d all look stupid. She might conceivably get it published, but her
editor would take great joy in sacking her as a tinfoil hat wearing freak once
the press frenzy died off and the sales spike had passed. So, basically, she
was in charge of a story she couldn’t use.

  
But, and it was a but that made her chest tighten and her eyes widen, she could
use it. She wasn’t going to write a story, or expose the machine, or fuck
about. What she was going to do was get that machine and take it to where her
father died, and use it to question his ghost what was locked away in her head.
She didn’t need the memories, she could ask the spirit. Assuming there was a
spirit, but didn’t people always haunt where they died horribly? And Dee might
not remember, but from the way everyone used to act, it was clear some horror
was involved.

  
Realising her hands were gripping the sides of her chair, Dee weighed up the
afternoon so far. Secret tipster, a story ahead of its time, a way to talk with
Dad. All in all, enough reason to get to the cupboard and pour a vodka or two.
She was going to do this. She was really going to do this. Let the naysayers
and the doubters and the million dollar prize fund sceptics be damned, she was
really going to talk to a ghost.