agentblack

The subterranean levels of the Institute building were legendary. All the things that were kept secret; that the administration had judged 'sensitive' (Amoral was a more accurate term) were housed here.

Somewhere down here, along with water cisterns that held entire lakes, and warehouses and storerooms that could hold twelve years of provisions or double as shelters; a nuclear reactor hummed away - making the Institute happily independent from another source of potential control.

Gossip suggested that somewhere even lower, even more deeply shielded behind layers of granite rubble, steel meshed concrete, graphite panels, and sheets of weird ultra dense material that had been developed in house, a fusion reactor was already in the final stages of safety tests.

The air was markedly cooler as Inspellen led us down a corridor filled with smooth green light. Despite his grandstanding in the lift, Inspellen returned to business as we walked. The corridor sloped gently downhill, just enough to lend a little extra speed to our pace, and stretched the length of an aircraft hanger.

Listening to Inspellen talk, it appeared that he'd cherry picked teams from the high end math theory groups, as well as the technical geniuses behind some of the Institutes most exciting AI advances - most of them I knew by reputation.

As well as those I knew from Alternative Contexts, Inspellen had made some other eclectic choices. This was Inspellen's gift, his ability to blend talents and expertise to achieve the esoteric goals he pursued. This was how he'd risen to such prominence within the Institute, how he secured the top level offices, how he justified his clout.

As we neared the end of the corridor, a huge pair of blast doors crouched, squat as iron toads. In front of the blast doors, a group of admin staff waited, dressed in light grey.
Inspellen turned to face the group.

"Gentleman! You know what they say, 'You're not really working for Inspellen unless you've signed a security form!'" A ripple of laughter again. "Consider this your formal invitation."

The admin staff drifted quietly and quickly between the assembled academics, holding out disclosure tablets, waiting politely whilst thumbprints were scanned, pin numbers entered.

Inspellen and I stood separate. My own contract with Inspellen was exhaustive and meant that I was spared these little inconveniences.
He turned to me whilst attention was turned away from us.
"I'm afraid the next couple of months are going to be a little hectic for the two of us, my boy. It'd be an idea to take that young lady of yours out to dinner tonight, to make up for all the late nights we'll be putting in."

He must have caught my grimace, his grin - cheeky and grandfatherly - instantly dropped away, replaced with a concerned stretch of wrinkled forehead.

"Oh dear - I am sorry my boy." Inspellen threw an arm around my shoulder as we turned back toward the doors - the admin staff had done their work and were drifting off back toward the door, murmuring amongst them selves. "Still, nothing better than work to keep your mind busy, and we'll have plenty of that!"


At the edge of the hungry sea I stand on a beach the colour of the ash of corpses.
At my feet is an oar, bleached by the salt water to the colour of dry dead bone.

I take the oar in my hand, turn my back on the sea and walk.
After the beach is forest of trees, starved and thin and twisted as a widow's fingers.
They claw at a sky hanging low with smoky clouds.
Inside the forest is a cave.

The cave flows into the cold clay earth. Its floor is chipped flint that cuts my feet and makes me stumble and trip within the darkness.

I walk within the darkness with my feet ripped and bleeding, clutching the frail wood of the oar in my right hand.
I walk until I see light.

The light is from a mist, a mist that flows from a great abyss that yawns across the cavern. It is a grey and mean light. It throws no warmth on my skin.
A causeway crosses the Abyss. It is a path, narrow and straight, that crosses impossibly far to the other side.

At the end of the bridge is a Wolf-Shape. It stands like a man, fat and gross in its belly whilst its arms and legs are famine thin. Maggots writhe and drip from its greasy pelt.
It is a nightmare thing. It stands panting at the end of the causeway, pawing at its groin, fondling the slimy thing that hangs there.
It is a loathsome thing. It is a loathsome thing that knows my name, that calls to me and beckons to me as I cross the causeway.

I smell it as I approach, rancid pig fat, the stench of rotting marrow bones, the acrid sting of the piss that sits in steaming puddles at its feet. The old penny smell of the Wolf-shape's spend, caked into the mangy fur of its thighs in thick streaks.

I close my eyes as I approach it, as it leers and pants with its tongue hanging spastic from its jaws, I close my eyes and speak:

"I do not hold an oar.
I do not hold an oar, salt dry and sea scoured.
I hold a sword."

I swing my blade. It cuts through the paw-hand that reaches for me as though it were mist. The Wolf-Thing howls and screams and curses my name with blood spraying across my belly, across my legs.

I swing my blade. It cuts through the slack belly skin of the Wolf-Shape, and sends soft white-grey innards looping and unwinding to the ground. The Wolf-Thing jabbers and begs, struggling to hold back the spools of slippery rope that burst from its torn gut.
I push my blade into its screaming mouth, whilst it pleads with me to leave it be, whilst it promises it meant no harm. I twist and yank whilst the Wolf-Shape vomits blood and bile and squawks and strangles around my blade.

When it lies still and silent, I walk past it, away from the chasm and its bridge.
I walk into the dark. I walk until I reach a door.

The door is vast. It is as wide as a legion of men standing abreast. It is as tall as a legion's spears mounted atop one another. It is bound with Iron and Bronze and Lead.

I close my eyes as I approach it. I close my eyes and speak:

"I do not hold a sword.
I do not hold a sword, hot from battle and blood greased.
I hold a key."

Set into the door is a skull, and mounted within the jaws of the skull is a keyhole.

I lift the key. It is heavy and forged of iron, rusted and corroded, and I need to use both hands to turn it.

The lock is stiff, locked tight by ages past and years fallen. It screeches and groans as I turn it, my arms shaking, my legs planted solid to the floor, every muscle twisting and turning the key within the lock.
I scream. I yell. The lock turns a final time as the key snaps, shears off, fragments flying in a shower of metal chips and sparks.

The mechanisms fall into place within the door bound with Iron and Bronze and Lead.
It turns inwards as I push, grinding and scrapping on long corroded hinges.
Cold air escapes, dry and stale with the smell of old dust and grit.

I walk past the Door, bound with Iron and Bronze and Lead, turn my back on it and walk towards the light.

There is a throne within a room of marble, a throne of gold, dressed in red silk. It is huge and square and solid. It is carved with Lions and Eagles and Bulls. It is a throne of the old and powerful kings. The warriors that carved the world with armies and ambition.

I close my eyes as I approach it. I close my eyes and speak:

"I do not hold a key.
I do not hold a key, long rusted and now broken.
I hold a crown."


Inspellen lead me into a circular cell that seemed to be the centre piece of the whole complex our new research group now occupied. The others had dispersed to various labs and computer rooms that radiated off of a central hub, within which Inspellen lead me.

"I wanted to show you this first. The others aren't ready for it yet, but I know from the time we've spent together that you're always capable of seeing the bigger picture, what it is that I'm always aiming for."

Within the dim green light that made me feel as though I walked on the bottom of the sea, a dark shape was visible. A tangle of pipes and wires of carrying thicknesses and grades lead to and from a thick cylinder, several times wider than a large man. In the half light, it reminded me of some kind of tree, with a tangle of pipe/wire roots at its base matched by a corresponding knot at its top.
Inspellen flicked a few switches as he spoke, raising the lights within the room.

" You're not the sort to get bogged down by the incidental details of the thing."

The tree was a tube. The pipes and wires were linked to various machines and consoles that were arrayed around the room. I heard the rhythmic beep of something that sounded like life support, and the constant bubbling hum of a water filter.

Within the tube, floating suspended in - I would later discover - a saline solution kept at blood temperature, was a young boy. Intravenous drips snaked away from his arms, up to the top of the tube.
I could not make out his face, it was obscured by something that looked like a combination of gasmask and night vision goggles.
His head was shaved, and a pin cushion of cranial probes appeared to erupt from his skull, their uplink sensors flashing sedately.

Inspellen could not keep the quiet pride from his voice.
"This is what's going to drive the Oracle effect. This is what's going to change the world."

I looked at Inspellen. He stared at the tube tank, as though looking at a prized and much sought after breed of rare show fish.
"Who is?" I pointed at the boy in the tube. He didn't appear to be more than fourteen, although I couldn't be sure what age he was, under the mask he wore.

Inspellen appeared to break from his reverie from a moment.
"Young Callum? Oh, he volunteered, of course. As soon as I explained the importance of the work he'd be a part of, he jumped at the opportunity."

I didn't doubt it for a moment. I imagined Inspellen in full flow, with his talk of new horizons and brave new pioneers, the human instinct to explore and push back the frontiers of ignorance. This Callum would've agreed to dive into the sun, just as long as Inspellen was there shouting platitudes of 'Icarus and his brave defiance of the nay-sayers'.

Inspellen waved at the equipment in the circular cell.

"We're keeping him in a basic sensory deprivation suite; we're trying to cut down on all external stimuli, except for that which we supply via the wet ware link up. The software we're running it all off is some cutting edge stuff that we've developed in house, I doubt we've even begun to exploit it to its full extent"

I put a hand to Inspellens shoulder, to interrupt his spiel.
"Sir, what is all this about?" I gestured to the boy in the tank, the equipment, and beyond the cell walls, the teams outside, starting their work in comparative ignorance. "What're we doing here?"

Inspellens face looked blank for a moment, before he chuckled and looked a little contrite.

"My boy, I do apologise. I have gotten quite ahead of myself. Come, I'll explain when we get back topside. All this can wait until then." He dismissed the interior of the cell with an airy wave, as he lead me back to the lift.


One of Inspellens vices was a weakness for sweat pastries. He surveyed an array of them as we sat at his favourite table in the Institutes main canteen, overlooking the slow curve of the river.

The dining hall was a vast open space, dotted with ornamental trees and ferns, giving the place an appearance of an intensely manicured forest. The curved ceiling gently reflected back the sound of hundreds of conversations, filling the space with the hushed white noise of muffled speech. Sitting at a table with Inspellen, I began to imagine it as the distant hiss of a waterfall. Outside the windows that formed the wide curving exterior wall of the room, rooks flapped past in pairs and loose groups.

Unable to tempt me, Inspellen bit into something sticky and covered in flaked almonds whilst we nursed intensely bitter Turkish coffees.

"What the Oracle effect is What do you know of Ancient Greece?"

I made a non committal grunt, and tried another sip of coffee.

"We tend to think of them as the seed that sparked western civilisation, but for much of it's existence, Ancient Greece was merely a pathetic scrap of land on the frontiers of the Persian Empire, a few islands and mountainous regions hardly worth the bother of conquest, filled with a people in love with squabbling for it's own sake and endless internecine wars."

"Only one thing united the city states and fledging nations that made up the culture we think of today as ancient Greece."

"The Oracle of Delphi?" I took a shot in the dark, whilst I stirred a spoonful of honey into my coffee to try and take the edge of the bitterness that caught in my throat.

"Exactly!" Inspellen clapped his hands, and then reached for a flaky cinnamon roll. He spoke whilst he chewed, gesturing with the diminishing remains of the roll.

"The kings and leaders of Greece all paid tribute and respect at the temple of the Oracle. The advice was the usual clap trap that's always been peddled by the most successful soothsayers and mystic - conmen all of them - vague and ambiguous, capable of being read either way. With hindsight, 100% correct, as long as you interpreted it all the right way."

I nodded. "What does that have to do with this project?"

"Ah!" Inspellen pointed to me with what was left of the cinnamon roll, reaching with his other hand for a flat slab of sticky cake studded with dried apricot and dates.
"What was important about the Oracle, what intrigues me, is not the substance of the predictions, but the unifying effect it had.
It was an entirely independent institution, free of partisan allegiances and the influence of politics, and leaders of men paid heed to what the Oracle - a young girl hallucinating from the influence of narcotic herbs and volcanic fumes, apparently in communion with Great Apollo himself - had to tell them."

"And you want to recreate that effect?"

"Exactly!" Inspellen paused for a moment, chewing steadily on the slab of cake he had popped whole into his mouth. His eyes widened for a moment before he began speaking again.

"Do try a slice of that fruit cake, it's delicious Yes, if we can recreate our own Oracle, we could be in a position of unprecedented influence. We can effect some real and lasting change! We've the technology and expertise here to give some real advice, make some concrete predictions that will be of some use"

It seemed to be the sort of statement that should be whispered behind closed doors, but Inspellen almost sang the words out. He knocked back his coffee in a quick snapping motion of his head and wrist, gagging a little as the bitterness washed over him in a wave you could see, a shudder that started at his shoulders and ended in a shake of his head like a dog flinging water from its coat.

I took the opportunity to ask him another question.

"But why? Why the boy in that tank?" Inspellen looked at me for a moment, whilst he dug a currant from a molar with his tongue.

"The power of belief. It's simultaneously the least and most important part of the whole scheme. We'll feed images, suggestions into our 'Oracle' and present the resulting sensory impressions that will bounce back off of his brain as evidence to our enquirers, much as the priests interpreted the ravings of the Oracle."

"Except we're able to control exactly what that young man Callum experiences, and our interpretation of the 'evidence' will contain the actual solutions to whatever problems we have been presented with, or the outcomes we wish to engender.
We'll have full control from start to finish."

"Yes, but why not give them the information straight? Why all this" I struggled to think of a term, weaving my hands above my cup, "Why all this theatre?"

Inspellen nodded, pushing back his coffee cup.
"I'll admit that it seems a trifle melodramatic, at first. But I want you to remember that politicians are by their very nature suspicious and cynical people.
If you or I were to suggest that the key to reducing crime was a policy shift away from a strategy of retribution and punishment and an emphasis on higher state investment in lower income communities coupled with high presence policing in specific trouble spots, we would be accused of a political bias, and our ideas dismissed, regardless of their worth."

"But if this suggestion came from the great unknown, from beyond the frontiers of what is known and logical and rational, then the effect is greater. Science has advanced man's understanding of the world around us to such an extent that we need an extraordinarily high level of education to truly understand even the smallest part of it.

Just look at the amount of specialisations within the Institutes faculties, where once there was merely Chemist, Biologist, Physicist, Mathemetician, which in turn used all to be encompassed within the term Natural Philosopher."

"Politicians lack that level of education. We can dress anything up in pseudo-scientific babble and they'll swallow it. Presentation is everything."

Inspellen stood, brushing crumbs from his jacket.

"Hence the Oracle Project - We're tapping into that legacy of belief. Where once kings and tyrants travelled to a temple built above a crack in the earth, to journey into the very underworld itself to converse with a medium in touch with the Gods, our prime ministers and presidents and junta generals will travel to a temple of sorts and descend into the underworld to converse with a boy apparently in touch with the uncharted forces of the universe."

Snatching one last morsel as he left, something that smelt sweetly of honey and gingerbread, Inspellen swept out of the dining hall, leaving me staring out over the river.