Alex became aware of a feeling that had subtly entered his head without his permission. It was loss, anger, and panic rolled into one – and the image of Dean Ginelli lay under it all.
Dad? Why am I thinking of Dad?
Alex was no stranger to negative feelings about his father. But why they nagged him so strongly in New London’s clone factory, he had no idea.
However, the papers in his left hand would give him some clues.
Alex had almost forgotten about the report from the Central Research Headquarters. The half nine deadline was so firm in his mind that reading it had been an impossibility. He sat down in one of the swivel-chairs, kept one hand on his assault rifle, and started to read.
Executive Summary Report: The Ginelli Project Last updated May 18th, Year One
They were working on this yesterday !
This document provides information relating to the following: • The cloning of insurgent Alex Ginelli from Terrorist Faction 001; • Events concerning the deal made between Alex Ginelli and New London Complex staff on April 25th; • Cross-references to the early experimental stages of Acceleration (see separate report); • Subsequent attempts to locate the insurgents’ base of operations (referred to by Ginelli as ‘Spitfire’s Rise’).
By the end of the opening paragraph, Alex was so engrossed that he had forgotten he was in the midst of a battlefield.
Deal? What kind of deal did I make?
And why don’t I remember it?
… What will I tell the others , once I find out what I did?
A song tried to enter Alex’s head, but he managed to keep it out.
Wait, what was that about?
He read on, his heart thumping against his chest as if trying to make him stop.
On April 25th, Year One, an intrusion was made by five members of Terrorist Faction 001: Alex Ginelli, Ewan West, Kate Arrowsmith, Jack Hopper, and Charlie Coleman (deceased). Ginelli was separated from his group and trapped inside the Clone Factory Alpha Control Room, and the decision was made to involve Dr Gwen Crossland (psychiatrist/experimental hypnotherapist).
There was a whisper in Alex’s memory about a woman called Gwen, but no more. However, the mention of ‘experimental hypnotherapy’ frightened him.
Dr Crossland’s previous interactions with insurgents had yielded no positive results, despite her unparalleled expertise. Her previous test case, Daniel Amopoulos (deceased) was unable to offer details about Dr Joseph McCormick or ‘Spitfire’s Rise’ due to his own lack of knowledge. He also did not consent to the cloning process before his death.
A nd I did?
In contrast, Ginelli’s resilience was soon worn down, and he was amenable to a deal whereby he would provide a new clone model – and information about his group’s whereabouts – in exchange for his own safety.
Alex’s stomach started to disagree with him. Nothing in these words sounded like the person he believed himself to be. The real Alex Ginelli would last longer than Daniel, surely? Why did he volunteer himself to be cloned? How was his resilience ‘worn down’? And how could he give away the location of Spitfire’s Rise without knowing it himself?
None of it made sense. Grant’s staff would not offer him a survival deal and actually keep him alive at the end of it. And Alex was smart enough to know that, so he would never have accepted such a deal.
A song tried to enter his head again, and he dismissed it. He scanned through the document to get to the part where he was manipulated.
Dr Crossland was instructed to use her experimental ‘two-track mind’ therapy to create two different memory streams: one where Ginelli would remember the entirety of his experience with us, and one where he would remember none of it. Ginelli would be forcefully switched between each memory stream depending on our purposes.
Dr Crossland was able to glean Alex’s vulnerabilities using data from his old social media accounts. Two songs were chosen as triggers to switch Ginelli between his typical state of ignorance and his state of full awareness. His full memory would be switched on and off respectively by: 1) Smoke on the Water (Deep Purple, 1972) 2) Barbie Girl (Aqua, 1997)
‘ Barbie Girl ’ ?! Seriously?
It made sense. Just two lines of that song made him want to shut down his whole brain, and he had probably told that to Facebook at some point.
But he had found out how to get his memory back.
‘Smoke on the Water’. It was the same song he had spent the last few minutes trying to keep out of his head. He had known his brain was fighting against it, but not consciously realised what it was doing – in the same way that he had known about his memory gap for three weeks, but his brain had avoided thinking about it, so he had never realised.
All he needed to do to switch his memory back on was sing ‘Smoke on the Water’.
The prospect terrified him. It crossed his mind that he might prefer to live in ignorance rather than learn what he had done. But the situation was bigger than him. His friends would suffer if he didn’t do this.
They may have suffered already because of me. But screw it, let’s see what happens.
‘Duh duh duuuh, duh duh duduuuh, duh duh duuuh, duh duh…’
To an outsider, the scene would have looked ridiculous: a grown man sat on a swivel-chair, in an abandoned room above a burned-out clone factory, singing to himself whilst reading and balancing an assault rifle on his lap.
But as the song entered his head, a sleeping part of Alex Ginelli woke up. He was met with the greatest headache of his whole life, as if he had absorbed an entire encyclopaedia in less than a second, and his brain switched over to its other memory stream.
*
Kate had better get out, he had thought to himself as he had clutched his sticky shoulder wound. Otherwise I got trapped here for nothing.
He had not known what had become of Ewan and Charlie. Ewan had aborted the mission and told them to return to Floor Z where Jack was guarding the exit.
A miniature army of clones had surrounded the door of the Alpha Control Room, and his only weapons had been rifles from the control room’s dead clones and their limited ammunition. But twenty minutes had passed, and the army outside had done nothing but wait.
Alex had worked out that his fate would be similar to Daniel’s. If they wanted him dead immediately, they could have invaded and shot him.
The phone mounted to the wall had rung, and Alex had swallowed his fear and answered. ‘Smoke on the Water’ had been the first sound he had heard, and then a soft, soothing voice spoke over it.
‘Alex Ginelli,’ she had said, ‘my name is Gwen Crossland. Listen very carefully. Your life depends on what you do next.’
‘Tell Grant no deal,’ Alex had answered. ‘Ever.’
*
The clone factory had been so much louder on the inside. And bigger too: from the Alpha Control Room, still visible to Alex somewhere in the distance, it had looked enormous. From the factory floor, it looked unending.
‘Are you ready for this, Alex?’ the soft voice of Gwen Crossland had said.
Alex had looked sideways at Crossland, a four-foot-something, grey-haired old hag with a wicked smile and the demeanour of a nearly-retired headmistress. She was forceful without being loud, although the hundred clones behind her had helped.
‘You won’t remember it,’ she said, almost whispering. ‘You won’t even remember consenting to the deal.’