The thirty-third floor of a new WOCO building is the temporary home of *The Reading Department*, although I’m not meant to refer to it as that. People in the building don’t know it as *The Reading Department*. To them, it’s *Service Administration.*
The elevator reaches the floor and the doors are barely open before a man in dark-rimmed glasses and a black hoodie extends a hand towards me. But he doesn’t intend to shake my hand. He reaches around my back to guide me out of the elevator as quickly as possible.
This is my handler. And I think he takes his job title too literally.
“You’re late,” he says. Another man determined not to introduce himself.
“Sorry, it took a while to get accreditation.”
We speed past reception and head down a corridor. After passing through a set of double doors we walk down another, darker corridor, spotlights in the ceiling providing minimal lighting.
My handler stops and opens a door into a room. I peek round the corner. The floors and walls are all painted black. Visual stimulation is a no-no in what I do. The decorator obviously took no chances with his brief.
There’s a table in the middle of the room. On it is a large, brown envelope, a pencil and a pad of paper.
“In you go,” says my handler. “Do you need a drink?”
I shake my head and walk into the room. The handler follows. “I’m not staying,” he says. “When you’re finished push the button on the wall. I’ll be back for the debrief. Good luck.”
The handler leaves and the door beeps as it locks.
This is it — my first assignment for *The Reading Department.*
I slide my finger under the leaf of the sealed envelope and take out the piece of paper inside.
There are eight numbers written on the paper, eight numbers that form a set of random co-ordinates. They have no significance for my target, they just help to align my mind. The numbers are followed by two words… *immortality leak*.
Those two words make me believe that WOCO don’t know who the target is. They don’t have anybody in particular in mind. That’s why they’ve added the prompt. They want my unconscious mind to latch onto those words and use them to find the person who leaked the immortality research results.
This is a much more difficult brief than if the target is a specific person.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes, ready to remote view. It’s the name for what I’ve been training to do. What started as a paranoid experiment by both sides of the Cold War in the twentieth century has been refined by WOCO. And I’m one of the first officers, maybe *the* first officer, to be trained in its use.
“Nine, two, nine, four, seven, seven, one, six… immortality leak.”
My mind goes searching through the ether, looking for a target’s thoughts. There are billions of people out there. They each have their own thoughts.
I hear those thoughts almost immediately.
My brain is frantic, hyperactive. I zone in on the thoughts of one particular person, guided by my subconscious. I can’t see him, of course, I’m locked in a room. But I can hear his thoughts as clearly as if I were physically inside his mind. He’s thinking about immortality…
“If they make everybody immortal, my insurance business will fall apart.”
He’s not the target my handler has in mind. He’s not a person whose thoughts I’m meant to read. I know because my brain doesn’t react. It doesn’t react to the “immortality leak” trigger.
I move on.
Another person’s thoughts wander up to my mind.
“Should I kill myself now or wait? Do I need immortality? Or would that mean more of the same? More of this shit?” He isn’t my target, either. But his thoughts scare me.
I feel a tear escape. My breathing becomes shallow. I’m feeling this man’s fear.
I want to help him, tell him not to end his life. But I can’t. I don’t know who he is, where he lives.
It soon becomes too late. I sense his jump. I hear him think, “The ocean, so close.”
I get out of his mind quickly, before impact. I don’t want to experience his suicide. I don’t know what will happen to me if I do.
I force my mind to travel.
I’m out of him before he hits the sea.
More thoughts. More people. Hopping from head to head.
This carries on for around an hour, I think, maybe two. Time isn’t easily measurable in this state. All I can say for certain is that it feels like an hour.
Until I find a target that resonates.
This target’s thoughts glow. That’s the only way to describe the sensation. I can’t see a person’s thoughts and yet they glow like a movie screen in my head. This is a strange state to be in.
I circle the target for a while, trying to steady my breathing, nervous of what I’ll find inside.
I drift.
I drift inside the target’s head…
