Chapter 11 Not much of a disguise

Friday 6th August

‘I don’t know, Doctor Melton,’ said the duty nurse at Lakenheath Hospital as they both stood in the reception area. ‘He didn’t come out this way. The fire doors haven’t been opened. The window restraints haven’t been unlocked. There was no way for him to have got out.’

‘Except that he did,’ noted Ben as he joined them.

‘Has anyone checked room fourteen?’ asked Sue.

‘No,’ replied the nurse. ‘The police said they might look later, but they said that how he got out was an issue for us. They wanted to focus on where he was now. Lowland Rescue volunteers have already been scrambled to search the area he could have reached on foot.’

‘OK, I’ll check room fourteen then.’ Sue started to walk rapidly away towards a corridor.

‘What’s in room fourteen?’ asked Ben as he jogged for a few paces to catch up with her.

‘It’s the CCTV hub. Rachel’s very thorough. If she says all the obvious ways out of here weren’t used, then I believe her. We don’t have CCTV in individual rooms, but there are some cameras in corridors. One looks at reception and, probably more critically, the whole perimeter of the building is covered.’

They reached a door with the number fourteen on it. Sue turned the handle, pushed open the door and stepped into the room.

Ben squeezed in behind her. ‘More like a broom cupboard with a computer desk.’

‘That’s really all you need.’ Sue sat down in front of the screen and typed on the keyboard. Ben perched on the edge of the desk beside her.

‘They last looked in on him at seven this evening,’ said Sue, ‘and all seemed well. He was gone by seven-thirty. This is the CCTV of the back of the building from seven.’

They sat for five minutes looking at the speeded-up footage. Sue occasionally halted the video to check a movement at normal speed.

‘Nothing,’ she concluded as the time on the video passed seven-forty. She typed again on the keyboard. ‘OK, let’s try the front of the building.’

They watched at high speed for a further few minutes.

Ben suddenly noticed something. ‘What’s that?’

Sue halted the video, ran it back slightly and then played it at normal speed. ‘That’s John walking out of the main entrance in his pyjamas and dressing gown.’ She glanced at the time on the video. ‘That was at seven-fourteen.’ Sue typed again, and another image appeared on the screen. ‘This is the video of reception from seven-twelve.’

‘Well, damn me.’ Ben sounded surprised and puzzled. ‘That’s John walking right past two doctors, the nurse on duty and security. Why on earth didn’t they see him?’

Chapter 12 Lost and found

Friday 6th August

As Sam descended the airshaft ladder, the light below her gradually appeared brighter. She was around ten metres underground when she reached the mesh grille through which the light was escaping.

She had noted a feeling of anxiety during her descent but had paused for a moment and observed the feeling until it faded. She then focussed on the present once more and was interested to note no impression of any sentient presence – despite the illumination.

Sam looked through the grille from which the light was coming. The vent was about a metre square. The faintness of the glow at the surface was due to the angle of the grille slats. Now she was level with the vent, she could see that the room beyond was brightly lit.

She might have expected any subterranean chambers beneath the old airfield to be neglected spaces that may not have been entered for seventy-five years. What she was looking at was a clean, bright and fairly recently painted room. It contained modern desks, office chairs and racks of the sort she had seen in computer data centres. The racks were empty.

Sam placed her fingers through the slats to steady herself on the ladder and noticed that the whole grille panel was rusty. The air vents clearly dated to the time when this chamber was first excavated, and they had not been replaced during the more recent renovations. As she withdrew her fingers, the grille partly disintegrated. She noted clean white flecks of paint on the tips of her fingers and reflected that those who had undertaken the modernisation had simply painted over the old rusted grille. She wondered about the soundness of the edges of the grille and pushed at them with one hand. They easily bulged inwards.

Sam took a few deep breaths and focussed on the present moment. She experienced the seat of her awareness descend within her from her head to her abdomen. In some ways, that was like her descent of the air shaft. She had moved to a level where the everyday world seemed more like a dream and where new impressions might better inform her understanding.

She could sense no presence. There was definitely nobody here, so why were the lights on?

Sam struck the grille several times with her shirt covered elbow. As she had suspected, it was no longer made of iron. It was now made of millimetre thick rust, held together by a coat of paint.

She assumed that the ladder only remained in place because the anchor ties, the rungs and the side supports were thick enough to have not completely rusted away over the years.

Ten or twelve blows from her elbow made a hole adequate to climb through.

Sam cautiously crawled through the opening from the shaft into the room – being careful not to cut herself on the jagged and rusted edges.

Standing inside the room, she mindfully reached out into her surroundings once again. No people. No sentient life at all. Not even a fox this time.

She walked to the nearest server rack and manhandled it for a short distance to cover the hole she had broken in the air vent. Then, with her foot, she carefully pushed beneath the frame the rusted metal fragments that were still visible on the floor. It seemed wise not to advertise the fact she had entered this space. She also hoped there would be a more civilised way to leave.

Sam was suddenly aware of a noise at the far end of the room. The only door to the room was opening.

Sam felt alarmed and deeply puzzled. The ability to sense the presence of other sentient beings, other manifestations of the one Unity, had been a characteristic of her experience since her awakening. At this moment, however, she remained unable to discern anyone else in her vicinity – and yet the door was opening.

She observed her instinctive feeling of anxiety and watched it fade. She then moved quickly and quietly to a part of the L-shaped room that was around a corner – and hence not in direct line of sight from the door.

Sam pressed her back against a wall and waited.

She heard the door continue to open on metallic hinges, and then she heard the sound of someone, or something, entering the room.

The floor, walls, racks and tables in the room were made from hard materials, and the room had produced a distinctive sharp, reverberating echo when Sam had moved the server rack. Now, the sound of movement was the sound of something soft dragging along the floor – but with period pauses. It reminded Sam of the sound of an animal that was pulling something along with it.

Suddenly, a human figure appeared, shuffling past the corner where Sam stood. This person continued towards the end of the room, neither turning towards her nor apparently noticing her.

She saw a man of about fifty years. He wore a dark, check-patterned dressing gown and pyjamas. He had check-patterned carpet slippers on his feet – which explained the sound of his approach.

Still, Sam had no sense of a human presence – no sense of any sentient being at all.

The man reached the end of the room and turned, his back now towards Sam. He began to walk away from her.

Sam stepped from the alcove formed by the L-shape of the room. ‘Hello.’

The man stopped and turned around to face her. He was standing about ten metres from her. He looked at her but said nothing.

Sam was getting no sense of what he was feeling or thinking. She felt a little disoriented by this and reflected that she may have become too used to her sixth sense. Now, like most people, she was solely reliant on non-verbal communication from the man’s body language. He looked frightened and lost.

‘Hello,’ Sam repeated. ‘There’s nothing to be alarmed about. I’m your friend. My name’s Sam. Who are you?’

‘I’m John,’ the man replied in a Scottish accent that Sam associated with Edinburg. He spoke very quietly and seemed anxious and bemused.

Sam walked up to him and put a hand on his arm. ‘What are you doing here?’

He appeared a little more relaxed. ‘I’m looking for me.’

‘It seems that you’re very worried right now.’

John continued to talk as if he was partially sedated or half asleep. ‘I’m terrified. It’s like being in a dream and not being able to wake up – but this isn’t a dream, is it?’

‘This isn’t a dream. Where did you lose yourself?’

‘In this room.’

‘What is this room?’

‘It’s where the Starchild experiments took place. I was here, and then I was suddenly at Lakenheath Hospital. I don’t remember what happened or how I got there.’

‘Lakenheath is thirty miles away. Who brought you back here tonight?’

‘I came on the bus.’

Sam knew that geographical areas had their own regional peculiarities, but travelling thirty miles on a bus wearing pyjamas and a dressing gown would have attracted some attention in the area where she lived. ‘Did nobody ask you how you were feeling or where you were going?’

‘The few people who were on the bus didn’t seem to notice me. The driver didn’t even ask for a fare and, as I didn’t have any money, I thought it best to say nothing.’

Sam looked at her watch. ‘It’s nine-thirty in the evening. Do you think you’re likely to find yourself here tonight, John?’

‘No.’ John started to cry.

Sam put her arm around his shoulders. ‘Look, John, I don’t really understand what’s going on here, but I think we should go back up to the surface and try to find others who might be able to help?’

‘Yes, I think you’re right.’

‘Can you lead us out of here?’

Without speaking further, John took Sam’s hand and began to lead her back towards the door. He expressed no curiosity as to how Sam happened to be in the room.

When they reached the door, John pushed it open and stepped out into a corridor.

‘Shall we turn the lights off?’ Sam asked.

John stepped back into the room and pressed several switches near the door. The room fell into darkness.

The corridor outside remained lit, and John led Sam along it to the left. They passed several other rooms and then, after about thirty metres, they turned right into another lit corridor that sloped upwards to a door.

At that door, John keyed a number onto a keypad, and the door slid sideways into a recess.

Sam made a mental note of the code.

They emerged within the mental health unit, and John switched on a light.

From within the unit, the sliding metal door was concealed inside the back of a tall cupboard that was attached to a wall.

A comment about Narnia came into Sam’s mind, but somehow the circumstances didn’t seem to lend themselves to humour. ‘Where’s the keypad on this side?’ she asked.

John pointed to an area inside the cupboard that was halfway down its back and on its right side.

When the light caught that section of metal, Sam could just about make out some bumps in a four by four block. ‘Is this the only way in and out of the underground complex?’

‘There’s a wider passage that leads from one of the other rooms in the unit, but the door has conventional locks, and I don’t have a key with me.’

‘Never mind,’ said Sam. ‘Now let’s go and find someone who can help.’

Chapter 13 Making the best of a bad night

Friday 6th August

‘I’m sorry tonight’s not turned out as planned,’ said Ben as he and Sue stood outside the hospital. ‘I thought we might spend a bit longer over dinner together. I wasn’t anticipating coming to Lakenheath in an attempt to track down John Henson.’

‘There’s not much more we can do about him tonight. What were you anticipating for this evening, by the way?’

‘Well, as you ask, I was thinking I would find out more about you over dinner. I’d already concluded you were a lovely person, but I just wanted to check. You know, make sure you liked animals and children – as long as they weren’t your own. That sort of thing.’

‘I can confirm, now, that I love animals and children who aren’t my own, if that helps. Anything else?’

‘Well. I wanted to gauge how much you liked me. I’ve told you quite a lot about myself since we met at the hospital and when I drove you home last Monday. Although I guess your reaction this evening when I said I was leaving probably answered that.’

‘Yes, it did. I like you a lot. I want to spend more time with you.’

Ben laughed. ‘You know, if relationships were conducted like this – in the same manner as honest psychological or psychiatric assessments – then everyone would be much clearer about where they stood.’

‘Absolutely right. Now, what do you think we ought to do from here?’

‘Well, my professional opinion as a psychologist is that I should drive you to my flat and offer you some Pino Grigio.’

‘I see, and what would you recommend after that?’

‘I think it’s important you make your own decisions. There’s a spare bedroom at the flat the MOD provided for me. You could sleep there tonight or you could sleep with me for further investigations.’

‘What investigations would they be?’

‘To see what you liked in bed. The important thing would be that you really enjoyed yourself.’

Sue felt relieved and a little excited. It was nice. ‘I don’t think I can agree with that plan.’

‘Oh.’

‘I think it would be better if you carried out your investigations in my own home. I’ve also got some very good Pinot Grigio. I hope it’s not too much of a problem that I’ve only got the one bed.’

Chapter 14 Zombies and vampires

Saturday 7th August

‘I’ve come across something a bit like that at a Shingon monastery in Koyasan, Japan,’ said Sahadeva, looking at Sam on the screen of his laptop. ‘You say he walked out of Lakenheath Military Hospital and took a bus to Bodhiisha wearing pyjamas, a dressing gown and slippers without anybody noticing him – as if he’d been invisible.’

‘Yes. I could see him though, and Shingetsu could see him when we got to the temple. It was Shingetsu who recognised who he was and rang the police and the hospital. The police and his psychiatrist could obviously see him too when they arrived to take him back to the hospital.’

‘They were expecting to see him. You highlighted his presence to Shingetsu, and everybody else arrived expecting him to be there.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You said that John Henson seemed a bit lost and distracted and that his thoughts and feelings seemed rather disjointed. You also said you couldn’t sense his presence in the same way you could sense the presence of everybody else you met last night. He also told you he was looking for himself.’

‘That’s right. What does all that remind you of?’

‘We both know that awareness doesn’t exist in the brain, behind the eyes, in the way that most people experience it. You and I can move our seat of consciousness to other locations – including outside the boundaries of our bodies. We touched on this over lunch the other day. It’s the basis of remote viewing, of course, although you and I have only done it occasionally and always when we’re alone.

‘One of the monks at Koyasan frequently relocated his awareness outside the boundary of his physical body for long periods – sometimes days. During that time, his body was carefully supervised by the other monks because the thoughts and feelings that his body continued to experience were left in a partially disorientated state – like a puppy whose owner had disappeared.’

Sam nodded. ‘Even if people aren’t aware of their awareness, that awareness still provides a degree of consistency and continuity.’

‘That’s right. It’s easy for those who know nothing of eastern spiritual traditions to muddle all internal experience together such that no distinction is made between awareness and biological mental processes.’

‘So you’re suggesting that the John Henson I met last night might have been disconnected from his awareness.’

‘Without awareness, thoughts and feelings form a bundle of random artefacts that come and go. The mind still constructs an ego, though, which allows the mind and body to function with some degree of consistency – like an unconscious robot following its programming. For that reason, the lack of an underlying awareness may not be obvious to those around. Close companions would notice inconsistencies in behaviour, but everybody else would just assume the person was functioning normally.’ Sahadeva paused. ‘Getting back to my point, something else interesting happened when the monk in Koyasan – Nyogen was his name – was in that state.’

‘What was that?’

‘When he was in the meditation room and his awareness was not present within the boundary of his body, others simply didn’t see him unless they already knew his body was present. If he was pointed out to someone who hadn’t noticed him or Nyogen made a noise or touched someone, he would immediately become visible to that person. He was otherwise invisible to them. The monks called the effect functional invisibility.’

Sam smiled. ‘I sometimes have a problem like that finding things in supermarkets. When a staff member points out the product, I realise it was in front of me all the time.’

‘I know what you mean. It’s very much like that. It’s not as if the person suddenly materialises. Everyone subsequently feels as if the person had been there all along but had simply been overlooked.’

‘It might explain what happened last night. What do you think causes that phenomenon?’

‘I’m not sure. As you know, our sense perceptions don’t reflect the world as it really is. They’re an internally generated illusion – a virtual reality that allows us to navigate the material world. You and I can usually sense the presence of other people, but you couldn’t sense John last night. Maybe, at an unconscious level, everyone can sense the presence of others in the way we do. The lack of that subliminal cue might be enough to cause functional invisibility in the absence of any other prompt.’

Sam and Sahadeva sat in silence for many seconds while they both thought about the hypothesis. Finally, Sam spoke. ‘So, John Henson’s awareness, his consciousness, his soul or whatever you might like to call it, may have transmigrated somewhere. The biologically generated mental processes that remain are aware of the loss at some level and took him to the lab in search of the part of him that’s gone. As I said, he told me that he was looking for himself. From what you’ve just said, it also appears that the absence of a soul could cause his physical body to evade the conscious perceptions of others who aren’t primed to notice it.’

‘Very possibly. You know, you’ve literally just described a lost soul. That phenomenon appears in many folk cultures: zombies in Haitian Voodoo; the jumbee of the English-speaking Caribbean; the undead in central European vampire myths.’

‘He didn’t seem much like a zombie or a vampire – more like your lost puppy.’

‘I think zombies and vampires lend themselves better to Holywood movies than lost puppies. Have the police searched the underground lab?’

‘They don’t know about it. I thought we’d lose the chance to check the lab more thoroughly if the police got involved. Also, whoever had worked there would certainly hear about the lab’s discovery and be put on their guard. They might take steps to hide other useful facts.

‘I remembered the key code John had used, checked all the lights were off and made sure the secret door from the mental health unit was closed.

‘I told everyone that I’d found John in the grounds of the temple. Hopefully, he’ll neglect to mention the underground lab to anyone else. I didn’t hear him speak to anyone from the time we left the mental health unit to the moment he was driven away in the police car. He didn’t even speak to Shingetsu. John just kept staring in front of him as if he was in a trance.’

‘You’re a genius. You’ve made huge progress on this before you’ve hardly unpacked. I’ll drive to Norfolk this afternoon and join you and Shingetsu for dinner. What are you doing today?’

‘I’m leading an early meditation this morning. There’s free time on the retreat after that, so I thought I’d visit John at Lakenheath Military Hospital just before lunch. I rang them first thing this morning, and his psychiatrist said it was OK for me to come. My visit will seem like a normal, caring thing to do for someone who found John lost and wandering, and I might learn more about where his soul has gone. Oh, that reminds me. When I spoke to him in the underground lab, he said we were standing where the Starchild experiments had been conducted.’

‘That’s interesting. I’ve not heard the term Starchild, but it’s not a million miles from the word Stargate. The letter I received on the Thursday before last didn’t mention the name of the project. It just warned that a new and more dangerous version of Stargate had been tested at Bodhiisha and that it went well beyond remote viewing. The letter also said it was ready for deployment.’

‘The evidence I’ve seen so far certainly supports the idea that something out of the ordinary was going on at the unit.’

‘I became pretty sure the contents of the letter were genuine when you turned up out of nowhere. There are no coincidences, and I’m now certain the Unity’s guiding us.’

Chapter 15 Preparing for Starchild

Saturday 7th August

Lieutenant General Peter Rogers walked around the new laboratory within the nuclear bunker at Shorncliffe Army Camp near Folkestone in Kent.

All around him, technicians were completing the installation of the computers and related equipment.

When his tour of inspection was complete, he entered the smaller adjacent office where Major George Mackenzie, his second in command, was sitting at a desk. Peter closed the door. ‘Hello, George.’

‘Hello, Peter.’

‘It looks like it’s all coming together. How long before Starchild can be initialised?’

‘Another week. The move of the equipment from Diss has gone very smoothly.’

‘Any news on Henson?’

‘Still at Lakenhurst. I’ve had a report that he went AWOL for a while last night, but he’s back at the hospital this morning in much the same state as before. They’ve increased security so he doesn’t wander off again.’

‘What the hell happened with him? He was supposed to just be tidying up the paperwork, not experimenting on himself.’

‘Only he knows what he thought he was doing, and he’s not in any fit state to talk about it at the moment. Madeline, one of his dedicated nurses, will alert us if anything significant changes.’

Peter’s mind moved to broader issues. ‘What about Balapuspika?’

‘Satellite images have shown a direct hit. It’s hard to assess the full extent of the destruction as we’ve no one on the ground. There’s no word from the Chinese. They probably aren’t sure if the attack was from Europe, America or Russia. If they publicised the strike in any way, it would raise the question of why anyone would want to hit an obscure monastery in an unpopulated mountainous region of Tibet. That’s certainly a question they wouldn’t want asked.’

Peter nodded his head. ‘I guess they didn’t consider a direct missile strike when they set up a lab at the monastery. They were more concerned with siting their project away from prying eyes. As it turned out, it would have been better to locate it in the middle of Beijing. No other power could have launched a missile attack on it there – any more than an enemy could launch an attack on Folkestone without starting a war.’ Peter paused. ‘It’ll be good to have a day away from here tomorrow.’

‘Any plans?’

‘I’m leading the service at St. Jude’s tomorrow morning.’

‘No rest for the wicked then.’