I think the project was actually working when they brought in the KIDS. It would have carried on and who knows where we could have ended up. Although, to be honest, I'm sure it's still running somewhere, in someone's mind. Enough people must have known the formula when they told us we'd been decommissioned. But the KIDS were a bad idea (the acronym stands for Karmic Interface Delineation System but it's generally regarded as a load of crap and just an excuse for a neat acronym that spells "kids"). It all started when the head of the study put his semi-autistic kid into MindSpace. This kid was seven years old and he got in there way faster than most of us. Then they found out that this kid could stop a chimp eating an ice cream just by willing it. Then they did more studies on more autistic kids. They borrowed a few of them from the NSA—took them off the prime numbers study. It turns out that these kids can influence people's thoughts. They can actually change things. So then they got in a whole bunch of these kids and hooked us all up: one adult operative and one of the KIDS working together. The way it worked was pretty simple. First the kid got into your mind. Then you went into MindSpace. Wherever you went, the kid went, too. But the kid could actually manipulate reality or, at least, he could change people's minds. If no minds needed changing, the kid could do other things as well, such as retrieve your lost memories. All you had to do was look at a document once and it was recorded in your mind. OK—so not many people can retrieve documents from their minds like that, even after they've read them two or three times. But these kids could read them to you as if your mind was just an autocue.
We took our KIDS when we left. No one knew they'd stayed with us. They're dead, of course. All the KIDS are dead. That's why the project was decommissioned. Any project that kills a hundred children can't go on, either with government funding or without it. The KIDS simply stayed in MindSpace too long. No one thought it could kill you if you got lost in it. No one knew how to wake the poor little bastards up.
And now we have only one bottle of formula left from the twenty we took from the storeroom when we went. And what can I say? Surfing in MindSpace is something you just can't stop doing. So we need the recipe and the recipe's in the book. Of course, we don't just want it for ourselves. Can you imagine how much money there is in this? If we had the recipe we could sell it for thousands of times the amount they're planning on charging businessmen to fly to the moon. This is the only time I've ever been close to anything of any value. I have to get the book. I have to get the book....
I ... Actually, I have to take a dump. The urgency is like a voice in my head.
"Ed?"
"Yeah."
"I have to take a dump, man."
"For Christ's sake. Can't you hold on?"
"I've been holding on for a couple of hours and I really think I'm going to shit my pants. And how long are we planning to stay here, anyway? It's almost three A.M."
"Jesus Christ." Ed's hands are on the steering wheel even though we haven't been driving for hours. Now he moves it back and forth as if something is happening; as if we aren't just sitting here. The steering locks and he curses. "Fuck. Jesus."
"Sorry, but you know ... We could wait here forever and she might never come out."
Ed hunches his shoulders forward. "If she's in there."
"Yeah. If she's in there. I still think maybe Leeds."
"We can't lose the book."
"I know. I want it as much as you do."
Ed rubs his face. "OK. New plan."
My breath's coming out all ragged, like a shredded ghost. "Go on."
"How about we leave here now? Go get some sleep. But we'll give it to the KIDS as a mission. We'll send them to trail her."
I almost ask him how exactly he sees that working but I need him to agree to give this up now, so I just say, "OK." I think of the pale shag carpet in my imagination and the real chipped linoleum at the motel. Either way we have to go. I have to go. Something sure is insisting that I leave here now.
Part Three
In its factical Being, any Dasein is as it already was, and it is "what" it already was. It is its past, whether explicitly or not. And this is so not only in that its past is, as it were, pushing itself along "behind" it, and that Dasein possesses what is past as a property which is still present-at-hand and which sometimes has after-effects upon it: Dasein "is" its past in the way of its own Being, which, to put it roughly, "historizes" out of its future on each occasion.
A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle and an end. A beginning is that which itself does not follow necessarily from anything else, but some second thing naturally exists or occurs after it. Conversely, an end is that which does itself naturally follow from something else, either necessarily or in general, but there is nothing else after it. A middle is that which itself comes after something else, and some other thing comes after it.
Chapter Nineteen
So how long have I got? Not long enough. I get dressed and fold up the priory nightdress and leave it on the bed. Oh well, I knew I wouldn't be able to stay in that costume for long. Of course, I don't want to go anywhere. I want to stay here in my brown dressing gown and eat hot food cooked by religious people. I want to see Adam again. But they know I'm here. They'll send those KIDS here first of all. Can they go into religious places? I don't know. But if those guys got desperate enough ... I just don't understand the system well enough to know what they would or would not do. I just have to go somewhere they wouldn't think of looking for me. I have to go where Burlem is. Wherever it is, he's been hiding out there for over a year now.
Unless he's dead, like those poor kids. But I'll have to take the chance that he's not. And there's a problem. I don't know what to do with the book. Once I am ready to leave, I take it out of my bag and touch it, perhaps for the last time. I can't take it with me: There's too good a chance that they'll catch up with me. No. This place; this is where they can't go. So I'll leave it here, and maybe one day I'll come back for it.
Can I actually do this?
I run my pale hand over the cream cloth cover. I can't take it with me.
But what if someone finds it?
I look again at the small bookcase. There's even dust on the silver key. No one reads these books. They are there for show. I remember some English lit. joke someone told me once about why it's so easy to be a theology student specializing in any Old- or New-Testament faith. I don't remember the whole joke, but I remember the punch line: Because they have to read only one book. I'm not sure it's true, but it got a laugh from us all in the bar. So, do I take my chances and leave The End of Mr. Y here with the pope's poetry? I don't see what else I can do. I don't even know if I'm still going to be alive tomorrow. With my heart hammering like a heavy piece of machinery, I unlock the case and put the book inside. You really wouldn't notice it in there. I shut the glass front. Then I lock it. Shall I take the key with me? No, they'll find it when they strip me down, after I am dead. I'll leave the key here. But where? There's nowhere else in this room to hide anything. Knowing I have to go, I just slip it under the bookcase in the end. It's not ideal, but it'll do for now.
When I get outside, the black car has gone. The freezing air scrapes my face like a thousand knives. It's almost dawn and I want to be in bed, in the warm. What the hell am I going to do now? I'm going to drive far away before those fuckers realize I've gone. I'm going to go and find Burlem and work out how I can stop these KIDS from messing with my brain. And ... Am I now so lost in a fantasy that I don't understand what's going on anymore, or is it possible that I made the blond men leave? That's what I was trying to do. I just focused on Martin, and his horrible, clenched feeling, and I told him he had to leave and find a toilet. Is it that simple? So why can't they do that? Is it just the KIDS who are supposed to be able to do that? So why can I do it, too?