Simon says 4……..digital soldiers?

Another slow day at work so it wasn’t difficult to slip out of the shed with the minimal excuse of, ‘late lunch’, no-one batted an eyelid. This early escape allowed me a leisurely drive home and a shower before leaving to meet Simon. He does take me to the classiest of places, we met today at the Portsmouth bus station on what is called ‘The Hard’ the area directly behind the Gosport ferry dock. Classy it may not have been, convenient it certainly was.

We met in the café which was full of the usual clientele of homeless, down and outs and drunks. Simon’s rationale was that, other than us, anyone not of the previously mentioned statuses would stick out like a chimp at wedding (his words not mine). I knew what he was getting at, he was still worried about being followed. The problem was we were the chimps and were drawing some suspicious and hostile glances from the existing patrons. Simon didn’t seem to mind and began outlining his plan to move up north, Newcastle was his first choice, and start his own business providing IT support for pensioners. It sounded like a good idea and he had obviously thought about it quite a bit. I asked him when he was likely to make the move, his carefree attitude changed immediately. He glanced around nervously and hunched over his mug of tea began talking in hushed tones.

He picked up from where he had finished a couple of days ago. The increasing success of Flower’s Barrow began to draw more and more interest from the top brass in the MoD and visits were frequent and lengthy. Initially the sessions involved interrogating the deceased about any specific information they could remember just prior to their deaths. Simon was seldom present during these sessions but the other engineers who were had no qualms about discussing this ‘in house’ as it were. As the results were able to be reproduced and a number of the ‘deadies’ (as the disembodied voices were now affectionately termed) became quite open and candid it was decided to start recording all sessions on a new server based system which would also store the technical configuration, previously a basic off the shelf audio package was used. It became immediately apparent that the new method did more than just record the voices.

After one long session had ended the file was rendered and stored but the interrogator realised he had omitted to ask a vital piece if information. The configuration was still set and the questions asked. No reply. Again and again they tried to no avail. The configuration was reloaded from the stored file and BINGO! A result. Somehow not only the configuration and content of the previous session had been recorded but the actual entity had been captured by the system and stored. Unbelievable as it was a method had accidentally been devised to capture these poor lost, wandering souls.

There were a number of ‘hot deadies’ as the more talkative and helpful souls were termed and they were targeted to test this new discovery. Time after time it worked, they could be digitised, stored and held indefinitely. Certain useful items of intelligence had been recovered from these poor individuals but the powers that be wanted more from them. As if it was not enough that some of them had given their lives for a cause that was not their own the plan was to send them back into the theatre of operations, into the conflict zone.

Simon imparted this last section firmly but quickly, then he paused for breath and once again glanced nervously around the café. There were fewer patrons now and Simon seemed to satisfy himself that he could continue. I got the impression that he had gone past an important point and needed to continue.

If the entities could be digitised and stored, he continued, then they could be modulated and transmitted to wherever they were needed. Where they could gather information.

At this point a rather well dressed couple entered the café, bought a coffee each and sat down a couple of tables from us. Simon nodded almost unnoticeably towards the door. I nodded and we left. That, once again heralded the end of the discussion on Simon’s involvement with Flower’s Barrow for the time being. We had a quick pint in The Ship Anson, a popular pub on The Hard and parted company. Simon wanted to meet up again tomorrow but I declined, Saturday afternoon was better for me. He named the place and jumped on a bus heading for Cosham. I realised at this point that I had no idea where he was living, I would ask him next time we met but with his current level of paranoia I doubted if he would tell me. I was also very well aware that, once again, Simon had managed to avoid detailing the favour he required from me.

I’ve just got home and wanted to post this before I had a look at the recorded video from last night. Steve wants to set the camera up again tonight regardless of the results. We probably will.

More later.