‘But … but … you’re dead,’ Eisenstone said, his eyes darting, searching for answers.
‘Well, he’s not, is he?’ Clarice mocked. ‘Are you not paying attention?’
‘The lab … it was burned down –’ the professor squinted at his old friend – ‘You –’
Silently, Tim waited for further explanation – he was just as confused.
‘Smoke and mirrors,’ Clarice said. ‘It was my idea, wasn’t it, Bernie? I thought the best way to finance the research was to cash in his life insurance. It’d mean he couldn’t leave the house – he’d have to work here, all day every day. Little did I know that Bernie was hopeless … We tried and we tried but still, we couldn’t make our imagination box work.’
‘So you resorted to dirty tactics indeed.’ Eisenstone glanced at his trapped granddaughter.
‘Well, nice guys finish last,’ she added. ‘We tried softly, softly – Stephen stole your briefcase, even broke into your house once again to look for more notes. But when we heard you were leaving the country, there was only one thing for it. Kidnapping you was just a means to an end – don’t take it too personally. Mind you, after what you did to him, wiping you off the face of the earth seems a reasonable punishment.’
Professor Whitelock was fiddling with their reader – connected by countless cables to Tim’s – yet it was obvious from his body language that he didn’t like Clarice’s words. Tim wondered what she meant – that was the second time she’d accused Eisenstone of doing something to his former partner.
Dee’s muffled banging caught his attention.
‘I … I don’t understand,’ Tim said, looking down the long room at the metal chambers, all bright under the spotlights. ‘Why the imagination box? I mean, if you can make a teleporter work—’
‘It doesn’t work,’ Whitelock snapped over his shoulder, through clenched teeth. ‘It never makes the subject reappear. It can break things apart but it can’t put them back together again. It’s never worked.’
‘Well,’ Clarice said. ‘It certainly fulfils my needs.’ She wiggled the controls with a maniac’s smile.
‘Why is it so easy to destroy, and yet so difficult to create?’ Whitelock whispered to himself.
Clarice twirled in the middle of the lab, surrounded by her victims. ‘Isn’t it just wonderful what we have achieved together,’ she said, glancing around. ‘A device up here –’ she pointed at their imagination box – ‘meant to bring things into the world, and at the other end of the spectrum –’ she swung herself round, facing their teleporter – ‘a device to remove them from it.’
Tim then spotted something small on the tile floor, peering from under one of the worktables. It was Phil – he lifted a tiny finger to his lips. Looking quickly away, Tim hoped no one else would clock him.
Whitelock thumbed a switch on the fixed panel next to their imagination box and there was a loud, deep thud, followed by the familiar electric whoosh, like an old vacuum cleaner powering down. A few bulbs on top of the device flickered, glowing through the mass of electronics near the high ceiling.
‘It’s on,’ he said.
The tall machine dwarfed Tim. It was about the size of his bedroom and had windows, with thick rusted bolts around the edge and a walk-in door at the front. Clarice stepped towards the contraption. She took a moment to peer inside, placing her hand on the glass. The excitement was all over her face. Not for the first time, Tim felt rhythmic surges of anxiety. The only feasible hope left was Phil. For now, Tim would just have to play along.
‘Perhaps,’ she said, crouching to pick up their hefty reader, ‘it’d be best if Bernie tested it first …’ She passed it to Whitelock.
Clarice then pushed Tim’s hat on his head, and fiddled with a plug by his ear. Whitelock approached, now wearing their reader. Face to face, they stood, connected to one another by lengths of different-coloured wire that hung between them like they were pylons. Tim’s reader was, in turn, linked up to their imagination box.
‘Remember,’ Clarice added. ‘Bernie will imagine something, it’ll go through your noggin and then to the machine, so make sure you relax.’
Tim shuddered from a slight tingling on his scalp, like the prickle of static electricity, as they began transmitting via his mind. Gradually, thoughts and images infected his brain; he could observe what Whitelock was thinking. He could sense his memories, see his past and feel his emotions.
Sickened, Tim clutched his hat and began pulling it off. Clarice, standing behind, slapped her hands on top, holding it in place. The experience was so overwhelming he could no longer see the room. Tim’s entire consciousness was being hijacked. Thunder drummed in his head, followed by what sounded like a harsh, rising wind.
*
When he opened his eyes there was absolute silence and he was in a different place. He could see notes, paperwork and an old computer. There was daylight coming from a window. He looked down at his hands – he was an adult. Although conscious, he couldn’t control his movements – he was merely an observer.
A noise caught his attention. He turned to see Eisenstone. But he looked younger with brown hair and fewer wrinkles. They were in a different lab. It was a little like a hospital with white surfaces and expensive equipment.
‘Let’s just do it,’ Tim said, but his voice was different. He was Whitelock. He was reliving a memory and could sense that this was years in the past.
Nearby was what looked like a dentist’s chair. Through Whitelock’s eyes Tim could see a reader. But it was different, it was giant – like a dome hairdryer – and it had its own stand and its own control box larger than the main part of the contraption. There were warning stickers up the side, one sporting what Tim recognised as the symbol for radioactivity.
Whitelock sat down in the chair, looking up at the technology above his head. There was a loud electrical buzz, like the hiss of television static. He was excited – it was actually going to work. He was sure.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ Eisenstone said as he attached sticky pads to Whitelock’s temples. ‘I want this to happen as much as you … but …’
‘George, full power,’ Whitelock replied, looking him straight in the eye. ‘Let’s just get it done. Let’s make history.’
‘Indeed,’ Eisenstone said, now smiling. He checked his silver pocket watch.
Then, Tim noticed the letters ‘TDACD’ printed on the side of what looked like a very early prototype of the imagination box. Although he didn’t know why, he was acutely aware that what they were doing was dangerous.
Eisenstone placed his finger on a large red button housed on a control box near the arm of the chair. As he counted down from ten, Whitelock closed his eyes.
‘… three … two … one.’
Click.
There was that roaring wind again. Agony tore through him, every vein swelled, bone seemed to bend. Tim could feel every moment of it. There was screaming, deep, guttural. It sounded distant, then he realised it was coming out of his mouth.
A flash of hands, twisted in spasm.
Time stuttered and leapt forwards. Lying on the floor, he could see the ceiling, blurry and spinning. The room was red with a rotating light above, whipping round and round. An alarm.
‘Are you all right?’ a voice asked, muffled, like an overheard phone conversation. He turned to see Eisenstone crouched next to him looking terrified. ‘Can you hear me? Are you all right?’
All at once, Tim knew what they’d done. He could sense that this day, this memory he was seeing, was the last time Professor Eisenstone and Professor Whitelock had worked together. Something went wrong, terribly wrong, with the experiment. The reader had been too powerful and it had somehow damaged Whitelock’s brain.
It had changed him.
The two professors, partners, had then gone their separate ways. Tim felt the ache of a lost friendship. Whitelock spent years alone, obsessively working on his teleporter and on a new imagination box. Speaking to no one, he kept himself to himself. He laboured, day and night, but couldn’t make either machine work.
Tim now realised why Eisenstone had looked saddened, even ashamed, whenever the topic of his former partner arose. All these years he had blamed himself for what happened – for the failed experiment. But Whitelock had insisted on being the guinea pig, he knew the dangers.
The memories continued to flow into Tim – he now saw Clarice before she married Whitelock. She whispered in his ear. ‘Professor Eisenstone used you, he used you. He didn’t care about the risks.’
‘But,’ Tim said, in Whitelock’s voice, ‘I insisted. It was my choice.’
‘No,’ she went on. ‘He only cared about himself. Stay here. Stay here and we can get back at him together. We can be the first to make the atomic constructor work. We’ll win. We’ll beat him.’
Clarice was nice to Whitelock at first. She helped him, loved him. Then she convinced him to fake his own death – she said it was the only way he’d be able to finance his work. He agreed. He did everything she told him to.
Tim relived a rushed wedding, a hatched plan – fire engulfed Whitelock’s past, sending shadows jutting across his future. They moved his imagination box and his teleporter into Crowfield House, which became his home, his place of work and then, eventually, his prison.
‘Tell him I’m sorry,’ a faint voice said. Tim realised this was aimed at him. Whitelock was sharing his thoughts. ‘Tell him it isn’t his fault – what happened that day, in the lab. He shouldn’t blame himself. He doesn’t need to feel guilty. It’s not his fault. It’s not his fault. It’s not—’
‘—working,’ another voice interrupted. ‘It’s not working. You’re not trying hard enough. Give it here.’
Like a jolt from a nightmare, Tim was yanked back to the real world. His vision refocused, like looking through water at first and then bursting above the surface and seeing clearly. It had seemed like a dream – it felt as though hours had past, but they’d been wearing the readers for less than a minute.
Clarice had tugged the device from her husband’s head. Tim and Whitelock stared in silence at one another. Initially he had thought what he’d seen was merely the jumbled contents of an old man’s mind. But somehow he felt these memories had been recalled deliberately – as though Whitelock wanted someone else to see the truth.
‘Let me have a go,’ she said. ‘It seems safe enough.’
Across the lab, Tim saw Phil had scurried up to the teleporter and was tugging at the handle. He decided that the moment the monkey got it open, the very second Dee was out, he was going to make a break for Eisenstone’s chair, and then for the door. They might all be able to escape this madness.