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Darkness

It was all silence. It seemed like some frozen, never-ending moment. Her hand reached out into the darkness, searching. Searching for something to touch, searching for something to hold. Searching for a shape in the blackness she could mould, form, into meaning.

Seeing nothing on the outside, her eyes turned inward. She tried to create an idea of her surroundings in her mind. All she had was herself; her name - Sally Moore; and her knowledge that all her previous nightmares did - eventually - end.

She was still; the hands of fluttering uncertainty had fallen to her sides. She had only shape in the blackness. She only had intensities of darkness suddenly brought into existence as her body met them.

She waited, knowing that - in a sudden realisation - that her next step could be one to send her endlessly falling, falling until she was stopped, awoken by her alarm's insistent ringing.

"But this," she said out loud, shocked to hear her own voice and how loud it seemed. "This is no dream."

How she knew it was not a dream was not that clear to her. She could feel soreness on both her shins that she knew would become bruises. It came from where she had bumped into the strange unidentifiable objects that seemed to fill the... the... whatever it was… the space she had been trying to move through.

She could feel the air, but no breeze or draught as such, on her naked skin. There was a vaguely tight uncomfortable feeling around her wrists and ankles where she had traced patterns that could be rope burns.

Suddenly, she was crouched, huddled and blinking behind upraised arms. Sharp tears stung her eyes as everything became painfully bright and light.

Slowly, she uncurled herself, trying to blink her eyes open. But still they refused the brightness. She had to look down, away. Her head kept hidden behind the crook of her arm.

Almost standing she became aware of sound; the sound of shoes on concrete. Her awareness of her own nudity, her own vulnerability, seemed to spread up her body from her bare feet where she stood on the rough dusty concrete. She felt a kind of numbing coldness that made her shiver and hug herself.

Her eyes still refused the light and her head remained bowed. She knew she gave the impression of surrender, of defeat. She wanted to stand straight, strong, confident. But the cold, the harsh light, the fear, they all held her in the posture of acquiescence. She knew she was beaten, beaten before she even had a chance of fighting back.

Eventually, she could look up. The lights were bright, pointing right at her, at her nudity, like an accusing finger. Almost at the level of instinct, she felt her hands needing to cover her body, her breasts, her pubis. She had to fight hard against her own body to keep her traitorous hands by her sides and to pull her body up from a posture of defeat. She clenched her fists, hard, tight, down by her sides. She could feel her sharp nails digging into her palms. She wanted the justification of her own blood.

The pain in her palms awoke her anger. She was angry with herself for getting into this situation. She should have known better, expected this, prepared for it created strategies to avoid it, and if not that, to cope with it.

She felt a presence behind the bright light. She forced herself to relax. "Who… who's… the… there," she said, annoyed that it came out weak and stuttering, almost a whisper. Even she could hear the weakness, the uncertainty, in her voice.

She stood up straighter, her feet a few inches apart. She clasped her hands behind her back, trying to relax into the posture she had taken.

"Come on then," she said, projecting her voice so that it echoed into the darkness. "I'm ready. I'm waiting."

There was silence, except for a faint sound, like water dripping onto concrete, somewhere off to her left. She was sure she could hear a slight electronic buzzing from the powerful lights too.

"Are you ready, Sally? Are you sure?" The voice was calm, cold, mocking.

Two loud footsteps and just a pair of black boots appeared out of the shadows. A calculated effect. Sally had to stop herself from smiling.

"Come on," she said. "That sort of thing isn't going to work. You ought to know better than that."

"Ah," the voice said. "But, my dear Sally, I do know better than that." The boots merged back into the shadows with the same two footsteps.

Sally took a step forward, towards the lights.

"Wait!" The voice was loud, echoing. "Do not step out of the light. That would be against the rules."

"Oh, yes?" Sally smiled. "And, just - may I ask - whose rules are they?" She smiled sweetly.

"Your rules, of course."

"Then what is there to stop me from breaking my own rules?"

"Nothing, of course. Except… except your own sense of the purpose of all this. The situation is yours. The rules are yours. Stepping beyond the rules is up to you, of course. But what is the point of that? What can you learn if you negate the whole experiment, the whole experience?"

"But doesn't the whole idea of rules, of formality go against the very nature of the reason why we are here?"

"I don't know, does it?"

"Of course it does.” She was silent for a moment. “Anyway, we've lost it now. It was… those boots - what a cliché. After that… well." She sighed and shrugged. "Could you throw me my clothes? Oh, and turn these bloody lights off, I'm getting a headache." She rubbed at the marks on her wrists, smearing the make-up, ruining the effect of rope burns. She wiped the smeared cosmetics from her wrists with the corner of her shirt and then shrugged it on.

With the powerful lights off, and the normal lighting turned back on, the warehouse seemed to have lost its air of menace. Sally looked around her. It just looked dull, dowdy and exactly like what it was - an abandoned warehouse. All except for the one corner, which was bright and clean where the computers hummed and the technicians sat, waiting for her. She picked up her white coat, slipped it on, and picked up her clipboard from where she had left it on a broken office chair. She strode across to the technical area.

"Right," she said. "Any thoughts?" She heard a whisper to her left and turned sharply. "What was that, Michael? Speak up a bit."

"N… nothing." Michael blushed and bowed down behind his computer screen.

"He said you've got a beautiful body."

Sally smiled thinly. "Thank you Emma. I'm sure Michael will thank you for sharing that with us." She put her clipboard down on top of a nearby monitor.

"Michael? Michael!"

Michael got slowly to his feet "Ye… Yes… Mi... Ma'a… Sa…." He blushed again.

"Thank you… for the compliment." Sally smiled. "But did it work?"

Michael blushed and sat down again. "Yes. Like I said last time, by mapping your b…body movements from the video and the sensors into the program we can get a much more re…realistic illusion of a real person. It looses all the a… angularity." Michael smiled. "Our heroine no longer has a rectangular bum."

"Great, Mike. Well done." Sally smiled at him and he blushed again.

"I think you're in there, Mike," Rod called from the back of the room. "Mikey's got a girl friend. Mikey's got a girl friend."

Michael turned swiftly on his swivel chair. "Shu… shut up!" He threw a ruler at Rod who ducked then stuck his tongue out at Michael.

"Settle down. Settle down." Sally said. "You lot are worse than a bunch of children. So… so… how did it go?"

There was a muttering of positive noises as everyone nodded their heads enthusiastically.

"Yes, well." Sally said. She sat on a desk. She saw her skirt had ridden up; she smiled at her automatic reflex as she pulled the hem back over her thighs. But, she said to herself, everyone here has just seen everything you've got, you silly cow. "I was really inside it, really there. That is… until those boots."

"Y… yes." Michael taped a few buttons on his keyboard. "Look." He pointed up to the big screen that took up most of the wall behind the technical area.

At first, it just looked black, empty, but then Sally thought she could detect something. Then she saw it, slightly paler than the rest of the screen, a human body - her body - moving through the darkness.

"I think it needs something," Emma said quietly. "A light, a torch, a flare, something like that."

"Y…yes," Michael's head was nodding rapidly. "Maybe pitch d…d…darkness at a later stage in the game. But, make it too hard in the beginning and everyone will just give up. I can't see where to go, what to do. I can't even really tell that I'm b…bumping into things. There is no feedback. Even when I map in your sensory inputs from the brain wave scanner all I get is the feeling of panic, fear and so on, but no real sense of why I'm feeling that way. To make it work in the darkness we are going to have to get some kind of physical sensation in there."

Sally thought about being in that darkness, the… the thickness of it covering her body like a blanket, the total disorientation, the loss of any sense of a world, the fear that the next step could lead to falling forever.

"No," John said, dropping his pen onto his desk and swivelling his chair to face Michael. "I've told you before that sort of thing will push the project way over budget. Even this brain wave scanner interface thing…. I had to work my bollocks off to get the board even to consider the experiment. Actually incorporating all the emotional data into the game itself… well, that is… I'll be honest pretty unlikely at the moment."

"Oh, shit." Michael buried his face in the palms of his hands.

"Sorry Mike," John said. "But you know… if it was up to me… and I'll keep pushing for it, for you. You know that don't you?"

"Y…yes John, thanks. Thanks for your support. I ought to have realised, but…." Michael looked up at John. "One day, eh? Maybe?

“One day. Yes.” John smiled and nodded his agreement. "Sally?"

John was looking at her. Everyone was looking at her. "No. I want the start in darkness. Just think about it, she starts with nothing, not even a world," Sally said eventually.

"But will they keep playing?" Emma shrugged. "I don't know."

"Oh yes they will," Rod's voice was loud in its certainty. "Who plays all these bloody games we make - teenage boys, that's who. Promise them that they are going to see a naked woman as soon as they find the torch, candle, box of flares or whatever and I can guarantee that ninety-five per-cent of them will stay up all bloody night if necessary."

"That was another point I was going to raise," John said. "Heaven knows I'm no prude, but…."

"But what?" Rod said. "You don't like the idea of all those teenage sad-cases getting all manner of pervy thoughts about your wife, our own dear Sally here?"

"No, I…." John looked around, at Sally, at Emma and back to Sally.

"Or, is it that you like the idea," Rod grinned at John.

"You little bas…." John stood up and headed towards Rod, vaulting over one of the desks. Rod sat, still smiling at John, waiting.

"John!" Sally yelled. "Stop."

John stopped and stood; his shoulders slumped and head bowed.

"That's it," Rod whispered. "Do exactly what little wifey tells you. Perhaps that's why she wants all those teenagers lusting after her, is that what gets you all hot and bothered? What's the matter, are you leaving her short, is she starting to look elsewh…."

"Rod! You shut up too," Sally's voice echoed around the silence of the warehouse. "I'd expect an apology. But you'd have to be a real man to do that."

"Yes," Emma said, standing up and deliberately moving her chair further away from Rod's. "And I don't think a real man would keep slipping off to the bog with those print-offs of Sally in the nude hidden under his shirt either."

"That's a lie!" Rod stood and pointed down at Emma. "You should apologise to me."

Emma just smiled and tapped a button on her keyboard. "These days it seems there are web-cams, spy-cams and mini-cams everywhere, doesn’t it? Here's one that just happened to end up in the men's toilets."

Everyone turned to look at the big screen. The camera was at a high angle - but it was obviously Rod walking into shot, locking the cubicle door and easing some photographs of Sally from under his shirt. Sally was stunned, seeing herself in the pictures - high definition prints of her walking around the set stark naked. She shuddered as she saw the image of Rod dropping his trousers in the cubicle.

"Obviously Rod was a name his parents hoped he'd grow into," Emma said. "They must have been so disappointed. I've seen bigger ones on my brother's pet hamsters."

"You sneaky, nosy little bitch!" Rod screamed at Emma, standing up. His chair tipped backwards and clattered on the hard floor. He stared at Jon, then Sally. "Are you going to let her get away with this?"

There was no answer. The only sound was the muted heavy breathing coming from the wall-mounted speakers on either side of the big screen. Rod turned and looked up at the giant image of himself on the screen.

"Right. That's it! I quit." He strode towards the door.

"Rod? Rod please!" Sally's voice was loud, strong, echoing in the large room.

Rod turned, looking hopefully at Sally. "What?"

"Don't slam the door on your way out."

"Cow. I never fancied you anyway," Rod said, as his image on the screen seemed to prove the exact opposite. The door slammed as the Rod on the screen sighed and ejaculated over the pictures of Sally. Emma tapped at her keyboard and the image faded to blackness.

"Emma," Sally said. "Is there a good reason why you installed one of you mini-cameras in the men's toilets?"

"Yes," John said. "I told her to. Someone was smoking dope in there. I thought it was probably Rod, but I wanted proof. I never expected that though."

Sally had a mental image of the pictures held in Rod's hand as his other hand…. She shuddered and wrapped her lab coat tight around herself.

"Second thoughts?" Emma said.

Sally nodded.

"I never liked this 'nude' idea anyway," John said. "Whose idea was it?"

"Guess," Michael said.

"Oh, don't tell me. Mister wrist-action?"

"Yes, I think it was. One of the first brainstorming sessions. That late-night one where we were all pissed." Michael said.

"Come to think of it, you didn't object to us smoking dope that night," Emma said. "In fact, if I remember, you were rolling most of the spliffs."

"That was different," John replied. "It wasn't company time, or company premises. Personally, I couldn't give a damn - as you say I like a smoke myself. But if one of the company high-ups - or their flunkies - take it into their heads to actually venture down her to see what it is we actually do to pay their salaries… well."

"You don't think… all that time, effort… all the late nights he put in. You don't think he did… all that, just to see me in the buff, do you?" Sally looked from John to Emma to Michael.

"Me…men can do strange things when they are obsessed," Michael lined up the pens on his desk parallel to his keyboard. "I know, from personal experience."

Everyone expected Michael to continue, but he was silent. The silence grew. John coughed and the others turned towards him.

"So… shall we drop this nudity thing then?" John looked around.

Emma nodded. Michael nodded. Sally shook her head.

"Why not?" Emma said. "Don't you… you know… as a woman."

“Partly… yes… and no," Sally said. "But I'm tired. Shall we call it a day?"

"That's a good idea," John said. "We'll discuss all of this. Everything… in the morning." He headed towards the door, shrugging on his coat. He turned to Sally. "I'll get the car, bring it around."

Sally nodded without turning to face him as she gathered some papers from her desk. "Okay."

"Aren't you worried," Emma said quietly. "About the effect that this sort of stuff can have? Especially now, with things like that brain wave interface thing of Michael’s taking emotions from real people's heads?"

"Yes. Yes I am," Sally said. "But not so much thing we do - games and such-like. I wonder what less… benign forces will do with the technology. That scares me. Some teenager beating his meat because he caught a glimpse of my bush - well, that's no big deal."

"Are you sure?" Emma said. "I saw your face when you were watching Rod come all over those pictures of you. You weren't so cool, so relaxed then."

Sally let the papers drop back on to her desk. "You want me to zip up, be like some Muslim woman, only my eyes showing?"

"No. Don't be ridiculous. Because I don't really like one thing doesn't mean I want the exact opposite. I just think we may be underestimating the power of the technology."

"You know what?" Sally said, looking up at Emma.

"What?"

"For once I agree with you. We do underestimate the power of the technology. Do you know why?"

Emma looked puzzled. "Why?"

"Because that is what we do. We are human. Goodnight.”

END

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