I should never have touched the medicine chest. That’s when the problems started.
Back in 1995 I graduated from a certain university with a first-class degree in physics. I won’t say which one, because I have nothing good to say about it.
My father was a scientist, and his father before him. I imagined I would become a scientist. But then I saw what the scientists at my university were actually doing, and it bored me rigid.
About a third of them were involved in stuff that could never be proven and could never be useful. String theory or whatever. To me, that’s not science.
The rest of them were nothing but technologists. They were trying to make improved CDs, or analysing oil flow in oil pipes. Doubtless that’s useful but it didn’t float my boat. It wasn’t my cup of tea.
The woke stuff hadn’t really come in at that point, so at least that was something. If I were studying today, I doubt whether I could even have graduated.
I’d grown up reading about Faraday and Einstein and Galileo, and I wanted to work on something exciting, but nothing in contemporary physics excited me.
After graduating I started writing bits of computer software and selling it on CDs and floppy disks. I rented a tiny studio flat above a pub, which was all I could afford. The noise from the pub drove me nuts, but at least it closed at 11pm.
I’d avoided alcohol the whole time I was an undergraduate, even though my fellow students were mostly quite partial to binge drinking, but once I’d got the flat I developed a bad habit of going downstairs to the pub and drinking more than was good for me. Looking back, I suppose I was quite depressed.
Physics had been my religion, and I’d lost my religion, after a long period of gradual disenchantment.
I had one good friend from university, a fellow by the unlikely name of Rupert. Rupert was intensely posh and had been studying Medieval History. After graduating he took over his father’s antiques shop. I used to go there sometimes when the shop wasn’t very busy, which was most of the time, and we’d just talk about stuff.
I went there one day and he told me about a medicine chest they’d just bought, from 1938 Germany.
“Do you want to see?” he asked me. “It’s in the back.”
A Nazi medicine chest? Of course I wanted to see it.
The chest was just an ordinary wooden cabinet. It wasn’t plastered with Swastikas or anything.
“There are people who collect this kind of thing. Of course it’s not strictly an antique, but I’m sure we can sell it.”
“Who’s collecting this stuff?” I asked him. “Elderly Germans? Skinheads?”
Rupert laughed.
“No, just people with a morbid sense of curiosity, like you.”
“I do have a morbid sense of curiosity.” I agreed.
“You can take some of the contents of it if you want.” he said. “We can’t sell it.”
“I’d love to!” I told him, enthusiastically. “Why can’t you sell it?”
“Well, it’s old medicines. Might not be legal.”
He gave me a bunch old pill bottles, and I stuffed them in my coat pockets.
“Well, thanks, I suppose.” I said.
“Welcome. Be careful with them. I don’t advise taking any of them.”
“Rupert!” I said indignantly. “You know me!”
I had previously enjoyed a reputation for sobriety, as I’ve explained, although I was fast losing it.
At home I laid the pill bottles out. I had no idea what any of them were. In those days the internet was still quite primitive, but I’d got a dial-up connection and I started researching the pills as well as I could.
Most of them turned out to be various extracts of animal glands, of dubious utility, but several tin tubes, all bearing the same label, caught my attention. The tubes said Pervitin on their sides, and I gathered Pervitin was some kind of stimulant.
I felt at the time that I could do with a bit of a pick-me-up. I was in a rut, and it was getting increasingly difficult even to write the software that made me a living. I placed one of the pills on the table in front of me. It was white and looked harmless enough.
I took one and washed it down with half a glass of water.
The effect was subtle, but discernible. That evening I found myself working on a computer program with renewed enthusiasm. I carried on working till three in the morning, which wasn’t unusual for me, and after that I had trouble sleeping. I think I got to sleep around 5 a.m.
After that I took a pill every day. They were awfully moreish. Before long I doubled the dose, taking one mid-morning and one in the evening. Often I didn’t get to sleep till 6 or 7 a.m., but I didn’t seem to need much sleep.
Actually, insomnia fast became a real problem, and before long I needed at least a couple of Pervitin just to function. This worried me, because my supply was extremely limited. I decided just to try to get as much work done as I could before they ran out, then I’d just have to have a week off or something.
I didn’t want to end up completely nocturnal, so I always made an effort to get to sleep around 3 a.m., but that wasn’t really happening. I developed the habit of taking a walk, to try to get myself in the mood for sleeping.
These walks got longer and longer. I’d get back sometimes and discover it was already nearly five a.m. It surprised me how time flew.
Over near the edge of town was an abandoned factory with a high fence around it. I used to walk along a path at the back of it. There were no street lights there; it was just a muddy track, but as long as there was a bit of a moon, there was enough light to navigate.
I think it was on my third Pervitin-inspired walk around the back of the factory that I first noticed a light in one of the windows of the old factory building. I remember stopping and staring at it. I couldn’t see any sign of movement.
In the weeks that followed, sometimes the light was on and sometimes it wasn’t.
My imagination began to run wild over this light. Surely the electricity to the factory must have been cut off long ago, so the light, I reasoned, must be powered by a generator. A random homeless man surely wouldn’t have troubled to hook up a generator, and run it in the middle of the night. I thought perhaps the light could have been rigged up by squatters, but why would squatters be up at 3 a.m.? Were they having parties, or what?
It seemed to me that whatever was going on in there, it was probably something illegal. Something that could only be done in an abandoned factory in the dead of night.
I started looking for a way into the factory grounds. There was none, but the curiosity was driving me mad, so I bought a small pair of wire cutters and, one dark night, by the light of a pen light, I cut a hole behind a bush, where I hoped no-one would notice it.
I wriggled through the hole, scratching myself a bit in the process, and walked over to the lighted window, making as little noise as possible. Since the lights were on behind the window and it was almost completely dark outside, I reckoned the chances of them seeing me were minimal.
When I arrived at the window, for a while I stood there almost in shock, unable to process what I was seeing.
I saw several men in lab coats standing around, looking at a rusty old wrecked car. The amazing thing was, the car appeared to be floating about a metre off the ground. I couldn’t see any visible means of support underneath it, nor any ropes or cables holding it up.
As I watched one of the men prodded it and it moved slightly before springing back into position and vibrating a bit.
Then a possible explanation for this odd sight sprang into my mind. They must have a powerful electromagnet underneath the car, which was somehow using an alternating current to create a repulsive force. Certainly it’s possible to do that with non-magnetic materials, but the car was clearly made of steel. It was visibly rusting, and only alloys of iron rust, and iron is definitely magnetic, or ferromagnetic to use the technical term.
I tried to think whether it might be possible to somehow repel a ferromagnetic substance like that, and I couldn’t think how, unless it was itself magnetised, but then I had never really given a lot of thought to the question.
The window was rather high and I had to stand on my toes to see into it, but there was old bricks lying around, so I tried to pile up a few bricks so I could get a better look.
After a bit of effort, piling up bricks as quietly as possible, I was able to see properly into the lighted room. As I watched, one of the men took a pen and lightly threw it towards the car, and it too floated, suspended in mid-air.
Then I lost my footing as the pile of bricks collapsed, and in an effort to maintain my balance I grasped wildly at the window frame, hitting the window with my hand.
Once I’d regained my feet I saw that half the men had cleared out of the room, and the other half were staring at the window with worried expressions. Then I saw figures with flashlights approaching from a side door.
I ran as fast as I could back to the hole in the fence.
I managed to reach the fence well before they could catch up with me, but as I was scrabbling through the hole one of them shone a flashlight on my face, and I think they got a pretty good look at me.
As I ran down the muddy track, they also began to crawl through the hole and run after me. They pursued me for a good five minutes, but soon I managed to lose them by taking a circuitous route around the streets of the nearby village, and before long I was safely back in my flat above the pub.
I had a throbbing sensation in my head and I was tempted to take another Pervitin, but in the end I just lay quietly on my bed, waiting for sleep that never came.
For about a week after that, everything was normal. I continued to work through my supply of Pervitin; by then I couldn’t really feel the effects of one tablet, and I took two at a time. I was starting to feel vaguely depressed, and the Pervitin no longer had the magical effect it’d had at the start. Furthermore, there was no question but that I had formed an addiction to it, or at least a dependency. Without it, I felt completely terrible. This worried me, because I could see that my supply would soon run out.
My appetite wasn’t great, and I was losing weight. I couldn’t be bothered to cook, since I had little interest in eating, and I began to survive only on things I’d bought from a bakery in town.
One day I went to this bakery to buy something to eat, and I fell into a particularly paranoid mood. But it was to turn out that my paranoia was not without justification.
I remember feeling nervous. The whole business at the factory was preying on my mind. Every person I passed, I wondered if they could have been among the men at the factory. And then, passing a rather bland-looking man in a grey business suit, I was sure I saw a look of recognition on his face. He tried to suppress it, but he had recognised me, and I had the awful feeling he’d been one of them men in lab coats who had pursued me into the nearby village.
I bought a couple of pastries at the bakery and then, feeling completely rattled, I decided to pay Rupert a visit.
He was sitting in an empty shop as usual, reading A Tale of Two Cities.
“Where’ve you been?” he said to me. “I want to tell you some stuff.”
“I’ve got some stuff I have to tell you first.” I said, and I told him about the factory, and about my fear that I’d just been recognised.
“I was afraid of this.” he said. “Listen, I’ve found out some stuff about Pervitin.”
“What about it?”
“It went on sale in 1938, and the Nazis banned it in 1940 because they realised it was addictive.”
“That’s not going to be a problem for me. I’m going to run out soon, then I can’t get any more.”
“That’s not all. It causes psychosis. If you’ve been taking it since I gave it to you, you’re probably already suffering from paranoia. Maybe you even hallucinated the whole thing in the factory.”
“I didn’t hallucinate it.” I said, but his words made my stomach twist. I thought he might have a point about the paranoia.
“Throw them away. It’s not worth the risk.”
I wasn’t going to do that. The very suggestion put my back up. The pills were the only thing keeping me going at that point. I’d been intending to taper them off, although I hadn’t started the tapering process. On the contrary, I was only taking more and more of them.
“Don’t worry about it. Soon I’ll have finished them, and that’s that.”
I ended up getting into a bitter argument with Rupert about the pills, and at the time I wasn’t even sure why. I couldn’t quite seem to control myself, and I left in a massive huff.
That night I suffered particularly severe insomnia. Finally I decided to go for a walk in the hope of calming myself. I felt a terrible anxiety in the pit of my stomach, mostly centring around the idea of the people from the factory finding me.
On the one hand, I could simply tell myself not to think about it. But then I was afraid that if I didn’t think about it, I would overlook some important point that would cause me to fall into their clutches. For example, although I was living on the second floor, it struck me that I ought to check that all the windows were fastened every night. If I hadn’t been worrying about the topic, I wouldn’t have thought of that. So then I felt like I couldn’t afford not to worry about it, but the worry made me sick as a pike.
I went out into the cool night air. In a way, I often felt safer outside than inside. Outside, if one of them spotted me, I was pretty confident in my ability to outrun them. Inside, they’d have me cornered.
As soon as I stepped outside I knew it was a mistake. I had a terrible paranoid feeling that I was being followed. I should have just gone straight back in again, but I was afraid they’d attack me right at my doorway and I wouldn’t be able to get away.
I tried to take a circuitous route to lose any pursuers. Several times I thought I saw a shadow flitting around a corner behind me, but I couldn’t be sure. I began to almost jog, walking at a fast pace, sometimes literally breaking into a run.
Then, as I was rounding a corner, I ran into them: three of them. They were dressed in ordinary clothing, and I guessed them all to be between about 45 and 60 years of age. Individually, although I’m no fighter, I thought I could perhaps handle them, but three of them all together was a challenge. They weren’t especially tough-looking, except for one of them who had a jaw like a lantern, as the saying goes, but he was the oldest and I could have hoped that age had already weakened him, or at least rendered him less agile than he might once have been.
The lantern-jawed man shouted “Grab him!” and the two others seized my arms while I was still frozen in shock. Then he produced a hypodermic syringe.
Time seemed to slow down. I screamed “No!” at them and I made a concerted effort to drag my arms out of their grasp, but it was useless. Then an idea came into my head, as though an angel had whispered to me, and I pretended to submit. I let my body go slack and I only said, “Who are you?”
Lantern-jaw said “This is for your own good.” and he pulled my coat aside and down from my shoulder and positioned the needle near my bicep. Without giving them any warning I twisted myself around, yanking my arms out of their grasp, and ran back in the direction I had come.
I nearly ran into another of them; the pursuing shadow hadn’t been purely in my imagination after all, but I shoved him and carried on running. He was a somewhat rotund man with spectacles, and seemed almost as shocked as I was by our encounter.
I ran straight back to my flat and unlocked the door, my heart beating wildly and the blood rushing in my head. I locked the door behind me and ran up the stairs, ready to put my fist in the face of anyone who might be lurking on the landing. But there was no-one there, and soon I was safely back in my flat, my back pressed against the locked door.
In spite of the adrenalin and the unpleasant sensation of blood rushing around my head, I could feel the last dose of Pervitin wearing off, and I quickly swallowed another two and washed them down with some water. Then I pulled a chest of drawers in front of the door.
Evidently they knew where I lived. They had waited for me, watching with the patience of a snake, until I’d finally emerged. Then they had followed me, waiting till I reached a spot where they could fall on me unobserved.
What was in the syringe? I guessed some kind of tranquilliser, or else a poison. Best case, they wanted to drug me and take me back to their lair, wherever that was—in the factory or somewhere else—and interrogate me in case I had been sent to spy on them. Worst case, the syringe contained an undetectable poison and they’d leave my body on the street, and the police would think I’d had a heart attack or something.
The next day I phoned Rupert and begged him to come over. He wasn’t pleased about having to leave his shop and he clearly thought I’d lost my mind due to the Pervitin. I was afraid to say too much on the phone in case they were somehow listening in. He came nonetheless. I told him to ring the bell three times in quick succession so I’d know it was him.
When he rang the bell I buzzed him in with the intercom. I still didn’t let him in till I’d got a good look at him through the spy hole in the door and had made sure he was alone. Once he was inside I quickly locked the door and pushed the chest of drawers back into place.
“What on Earth is all this about?” he said.
“Some men grabbed me and tried to inject me with something.” I told him. “The men from the factory. I recognised them. They’re onto me, Rupert. They know where I live.”
He had a good go at trying to convince me that I was suffering psychosis, but I could see that, in the end, he believed my story. It’s one thing to imagine fleeting shadows or to have a vague sense of being followed; it’s quite another to hallucinate actually being grabbed by two men on the street while a third waves a syringe in your face.
“We need to go to the police.” he said.
“They look like the kind of people who might have police connections.” I replied.
“No, that’s paranoia. They’re doing secretive stuff in an abandoned factory, for pity’s sake.”
“Just because they’re secretive doesn’t mean they’re squatters or something. They probably own the factory and just do things at night because they don’t want anyone to see what they’re doing. I’m not going to the police.”
Rupert raised his eyebrows sceptically.
“What about this floating car?” he said. “How do you explain that? You’re the physics chap. It sounds like a hallucination. You shouldn’t be taking those pills. We should have thrown them away.”
“I don’t know. It could be something with magnets.”
“If we’re not going to the police, what are we going to do?”
“I need to hole up here.” I said. “I just need your help a bit. I need you to bring me a bit of shopping. If I go out, I’m in danger. I’m sorry about this, Rupert, I really am, but I don’t know anyone else here well enough to ask them.”
“No, it’s fine.” said Rupert. “Don’t worry. Give me a list of what you need and I’ll get it, old boy. Then let’s hope this blows over soon.” He cast a wary eye over the little tin tubes of Pervitin. “Maybe when that stuff runs out.”
“I’m not imagining it all.”
He didn’t say anything.
I wasn’t imagining the whole thing. I don’t doubt that Pervitin is dangerous and that it can cause psychosis, but I wasn’t psychotic. I was paranoid, but with reason. The Pervitin probably did make the paranoia and anxiety much worse, but it wasn’t the entire reason for it.
For two weeks I stayed in my flat, and Rupert kindly brought me shopping from time to time. At night I lay awake, straining my ears for every sound. Often I thought I heard scrabbling and scratching sounds outside my door. I kept a kitchen knife by my bed; in Britain if you stab an intruder you’ll probably go to prison, but I felt that was at least better than falling into the clutches of those fiends.
By day I watched the street from behind net curtains. I moved my desk in front of the window so I could peer out while I worked. The annoying thing was, I couldn’t see the doorway from that window, unless I hung my head out of it. I did exactly that several times, but there was never anyone there.
Several times I saw a man standing across the road, possibly watching my doorway, but it was hard to be sure. It was a different man every time. One man in particular caught my attention. He wore a brown leather jacket and beige trousers, and somehow looked wrong, as though his clothes were a costume he’d put on to blend in. I can’t explain it, but that was how he struck me. He stood across the road smoking a cigarette, casting glances up and down the street. He didn’t look especially tough but there was something in his face that give me chills: a certain cold lack of feeling. I felt that this man was capable of anything. I didn’t recognise him; he wasn’t one of the three who had tried to jab me with a needle.
He disappeared after half an hour and after that I didn’t see him again.
I couldn’t concentrate much on my work. Computer programming is a lot about thinking and a bit about typing. I’d stare out of the window, try to focus on the task at hand, then I’d find my thoughts straying to the men in the factory, and to whatever was going on in the street. I didn’t seem to have the mental energy to focus on my work properly.
Finally the Pervitin ran out. I swallowed the last two pills with a sense of relief. Had that stuff been freely available, I would have had a very difficult time voluntarily foregoing it, but since it hadn’t been manufactured in at least fifty years, the matter was decided for me.
In the following days I sunk into absolute despair. I felt like nothing mattered and there was no point to anything. I was tired as Hell, and I slept a lot, but I slept fitfully and awoke still feeling washed out.
I craved Pervitin and there was none to be had. I began to ask people in newsgroups whether they’d heard of it and knew where to get it. As I’ve said, the internet then was nothing like it is today. It wasn’t like I could just look up Pervitin and find out what was in it, or sign on to some illegal website and order a bunch of Pervitin pills. The best I could do was to post messages on public boards and hope someone would reply.
The stupid thing was, I’d used my real name on some of those groups, because they were work-related and I was trying to uphold some kind of reputation as a real person for writing useful software.
That was how they found me.
After a week my craving for Pervitin was somewhat diminished, but I was still horribly lethargic and apathetic, if not downright depressed, and my ability to concentrate was still shot. I was at the point where I ought to have been able to just leave the Pervitin alone. The problem was, I still remembered how great I’d felt when I first started taking it, and I couldn’t help but contrast that with how completely rubbish I felt now that the pills had run out.
The craving itself was comparatively mild but very insistent. It was like a slow drip-drip-drip, wearing away at my resolve little by little, like a trickle of water wearing a groove along a rock.
So when someone replied to one of my messages, I was immediately galvanised.
“I have Pervitin.” it said. “A hundred tablets. I collect memorabilia related to WWII and I have ten tubes in my possession. Willing to sell for fifty pounds. The tubes are in mint conditions and as far as I can tell the tablets are perfectly preserved.”
A hundred pills! I told myself it was the perfect number. I would systematically ration them out, gradually tailing off. I would take just enough to alleviate my state of ennui, maybe just one tablet per day, then reduce by ten percent a week.
Of course that was nonsense. I was lying to myself and I knew it, but it didn’t really matter. I could lie well enough to sell myself on the idea of buying these pills, and that was that.
I wrote back immediately.
The purported seller went only by the handle “Gersdorff”. I wondered if he was German. Perhaps even some old Nazi who’d held onto the tablets for all these years. Or maybe he’d been persecuted by the Nazis and had a morbid fascination for the whole subject. These kinds of thoughts went round and round my head. Then I realised I was being stupid. The handle meant nothing. For all I knew Gersdorff was an English university student with an odd sense of humour, or just an unusual surname.
I arranged to meet him. He wanted to meet on a certain street corner very early in the morning, the day after next, before sunrise. I suggested a café but he wasn’t having it. I could understand his point of view. I had no idea whether the tablets were legal or not. Gersdorff may or may not be an actual drug dealer, I thought, but he was now literally dealing drugs—to me—so of course he didn’t want to meet somewhere too public.
This would mean that I’d have to leave my flat, and at a time when there weren’t many people about, but it would have to be faced.
When the time came for our meeting, I’d spent another sleepless night. My alarm went off at 4 a.m. and I was already lying awake waiting for it.
I got dressed, drank a coffee and put a coat on. Then I opened the window and leaned out so I could see the door. There was no-one there, and I could see no-one on the street.
I hurried down the stairs, went out through the door, and walked briskly off into the cool morning air. I thought I could just about see the first signs of a pending sunrise.
Twenty minutes later I was approaching the street corner where we were supposed to meet. I slowed my pace and scanned the street warily. I saw no-one. I walked in a wide arc around the corner so I could get a good view of the adjacent street before anyone could spring out at me, and it also seemed as dead as a doornail. Then I stood and waited, casting nervous glances down all four of the roads that met at that point.
There was nothing special about the street corner. It was just a quiet intersection in a quiet suburb.
Finally I saw him, walking slowly up to me. He was middle-aged and carried a suitcase. His appearance was reassuring to me; he seemed harmless, and looked like an antiques dealer or a collector of some sort.
When he reached me he greeted me affably.
“May I ask what is your interest in Pervitin?” he said. “Not that it’s any of my business.”
I hadn’t got any good answer ready, so I made something up on the spot.
“I’m writing a novel.” I said. “Set in WWII, in Germany. One of my characters is addicted to Pervitin. I’m buying some old stuff from the era to help me get into the right frame of mind.”
I felt embarrassed even hearing my own words. I sounded like an addict who’d just concocted an excuse on the spot.
He simply smiled and made sounds indicating vague interest.
He lifted the suitcase and asked me to hold it while he unlocked it. A vehicle was approaching somewhere off down one of the quiet roads, which didn’t especially alarm me, since even at that time of the morning there’s usually an occasional passing car.
He was entering a number into a combination lock. The vehicle was drawing closer, about to pass. I glanced at it. It was a white van.
Something suddenly felt off. He spotted the alarm in my eyes. The case dropped to the ground. The van screeched to a halt and three men ran out. My contact seized my wrist. I struggled to get free but he had a grip like a vice. Two of the men forced my hands behind my back and locked handcuffs onto my wrists.
“Who are you?” I shouted, but I knew exactly who they were. I recognised the man with the lantern jaw; he was standing in front of me while the other two restrained me. I recognised one of the others also; he was the man who’d been watching my door, wearing a brown leather jacket and smoking.
They said nothing, but bundled me into the van.
“What do you want?” I said frantically, as the van drove off.
Lantern-jaw was preparing an injection for me, sucking up some liquid from a vial into a hypodermic syringe. I thought I was going to die from fear.
“There’s no point me explaining now.” he said. “First, the injection.”
“Don’t!” I shouted. “Please!”
But he pulled my jacket aside, and the sweater and t-shirt I was wearing underneath, yanking down the collars, and stuck the needle into my arm, near the shoulder.
“What is this stuff?” I said, but none of them would talk to me.
I could feel the van turning this way and that.
“Where are you taking me?”
They said nothing, but they had odd expressions on their faces. They looked worried. None of them really looked like the sort of people who kidnap people for a living.
Soon the van slowed and the driver jumped out, I guessed to open a gate.
I was fairly sure we were pulling into the abandoned factory.
By then I had given up trying to ask them anything.
They opened the van doors at the back and pulled me out.
I was right; we were at the factory. They took me inside.
“We’ll chain him up there.” said lantern-jaw, pointing to an old pipe.
“We should have got some Xanax or something.” said one of the men holding my arms.
“Not now.” said lantern-jaw, as if to silence him.
They unfastened one of the handcuffs and locked it to the pipe. Then lantern-jaw spoke to me.
“I’m sorry for the subterfuge.” he said, squatting so his face was on a level with mine. “I know you don’t believe me, but this is for your own good. We’re going to leave you here for an hour, then I’ll be back.”
He stood up to leave with the others.
“What are you going to do with me?” I shouted after him, in an ecstasy of fear.
He turned around.
“We’re going to let you go.” he said. “In a little while.”
Somehow that scared me more than anything. He couldn’t possibly be telling the truth. Why would they go to so much trouble, only to let me go again? Either they’d injected me with something really evil, and I was some kind of experiment to them, or else they were planning to kill me. I could see no alternative explanation.
As he was leaving through a metal door with graffiti sprayed on it, he said, over his shoulder, “Please don’t struggle. You’ll only hurt yourself.”
I looked at the pipe they’d fastened me to. He was right. It was solid steel, with steel brackets at either end holding it to the wall.
I tried to get free nonetheless. I kicked against the pipe and the brackets that held it. I tried to squeeze my hand through the handcuff. Nothing worked.
By the time he returned, an hour or so later, a comparative sense of calm had descended on me. I was resigned to my fate. The apathy that had followed my withdrawal from Pervitin was, in any case, so intense that I had half-seriously considered topping myself at certain points, and if these people were going to save me the trouble, then so be it.
He squatted down in front of me.
“We’ve been discussing what to do with you.” he said.
“Oh, really?” I said, sarcastically.
“We think you could help us, and we could help you.”
“How deeply humanitarian of you.”
“The injection I gave you was for your own good. I’m willing to explain. I’m going to unfasten these handcuffs, and before you run off, I want to show you something.”
I eyed him warily, but a slight smile on his face seemed strangely reassuring.
He unlocked the handcuffs and I stood up, rubbing my wrist.
“This had better be good.” I said.
“Oh, you needn’t have any fear on that score.” he said. “Come this way, please. My name’s Robert. Dr. Robert Armitage. You can call me Bob.”
He led me into the very room I had seen previously from the window. Where previously the car had been floating was the man I’d seen outside my flat, except he was floating about three feet in the air.
“We are a small group of independently-wealthy scientists.” said Bob. “We believe the mainstream of science is corrupt and ineffectual. It has its place, but progress in fundamental physics has effectively ceased. We wanted to change that, and we have.
“We’ve discovered the missing link between the three electromagnetic fundamental forces, and gravity. We are able to generate gravitational fields to order. With this discovery, humanity could proceed to colonise other planets.”
Someone pressed a switch, and the man floating in front of me slowly sank to the ground. He came over to me and proffered his hand.
“Steven Attlee.” he said. “Bob is our chief scientist.”
I shook his hand, dazedly.
“The problem is,” said Steve, “exposure to the rapidly-fluctuating gravitational fields created by our machines does something to the blood-brain barrier, which initiates a steady deterioration of brain processes. We’ve found a drug that prevents it, but as yet we can’t generate fully stable gravitational fields that avoid the problem entirely.”
“That’s what we injected you with.” said Bob. “You were already in a paranoid state. It would have been useless to explain anything to you before the drug had a chance to work. Also, it appears you got addicted to Pervitin. Very bad idea. Nasty stuff. Even so, we believe you have potential. We’d like to offer you a job. A chance to work with us.”
I looked around at the assembled team of scientists.
“And if I … decline your generous offer?” I said.
“You’re free to leave.” said Bob.
“But don’t do that.” said Steve.
“In that case, I gratefully accept.” I said.
All of this happened nearly ten years ago. We’ve made progress since then. But the technology we’ve discovered is powerful. Perhaps too powerful for humanity to handle. We discuss the matter regularly. Our debates sometimes get heated.
I suppose, in the end, it’s up to the world’s governments to convince us that they can be trusted with a technology this powerful. If they can’t, well, we’ll have to keep it under wraps.
Our chemist has long since reformulated the injections into pill form, which I take every day.
Last week Rupert came to visit me. I was surprised they let him in, but they know we know each other. I very rarely leave the abandoned factory where we work.
He seemed sad, as I told him about our latest progress.
“Just make sure you keep taking the pills.” he said. “I think you’re improving. I really do. It’s slow but definite.”
“Oh, we’re improving for sure.” I said. “We’re getting better and better. Soon we’ll have the gravity fields stabilised completely.”
“Of course.” said Rupert, with a little sad smile.
