Former Chief Inspector Benson sighed heavily as he walked to his car carrying the box of items he had cleared out of his desk. PC Renfield ran up to him and said,“Inspector, I just want to say, it’s completely wrong that they fired you, and me and the boys are all happy you killed that psycho.”
“I didn’t kill him, Renfield.”
“Left him to die or whatever. He deserved it. After what he did to them kids. Sick bastard. What are you going to do now, Inspector?”
Benson opened the door to his car with one hand, balancing the box on his arm.
“Smoke cigars and read the complete works of Shakespeare.” he said.
Benson did in fact attempt to read the complete works of Shakespeare, but soon tired of it. At times he stood quietly at the window of his living room, which overlooked a field containing a solitary horse.
“I miss you, Julie.” he said, thinking of how his wife, who had died of cancer six years earlier, used to feed apples to the horse.
Eventually he decided to try to carry on doing the only thing he knew how to do, and he bought a newspaper with a view to taking out an advertisement in the back of it. There were no ads in the back of the newspaper.
“Bloody computers.” he said, throwing the newspaper onto the floor in disgust. He lit a cigar and contemplated the matter quietly, then, once he’d calmed down a bit he fetched an old laptop from his home office and began to research how to advertise on the internet.
Benson wasn’t a fan of the internet, but he used it when needed, and soon he’d successfully placed an ad offering his services as a private detective.
“Please!” said the young woman, “Let me go!”
“I’m so sorry.” said the elderly man who was keeping her captive. “I’m so very sorry, my love. Everything will be fine. I just need to do a few more experiments.”
“Let me out of here!” she yelled at him.
The man was wearing a bloodstained lab coat and resembled a scientist of some sort. After he shut the door to the bedroom, where she was chained by one hand to a heavy old iron bed, she heard him making noises that sounded halfway between sobbing and howling.
She knew he was preparing to perform another of his experiments on her. After the last one, her mind was fuzzy, and she was unable to even remember how she had fallen into the clutches of this deranged madman.
Her mind was going. Another experiment and who knows what would be left of her. She screamed in frustration, yanking at the handcuff that held her to the bed. She was much too scared to eat the food he had left her. Her stomach was in knots.
Again she tried to pull her hand out of the handcuff, but succeeded only in causing herself a great deal of pain.
Through the window she could see a field filled with cows. Everything was normal out there. Safety was so near, and yet so far. If only she could get the cuff off.
She tried again to squeeze her hand through it, but in the end collapsed back onto the hospital bed, sobbing and shaking.
“It’s an unusual case.” said Benson.
The woman sitting in his living room was clearly very sincere. Nothing about her set off alarm bells for Benson. Whether her story was true or not was another matter, but she clearly believed it. Neither did he have the sense that she was purposefully leaving out anything of significance.
He knew one or two of the people over at Stetley Police Station. He would certainly have a word with them and see if any of them could remember the woman.
“As far as you’re aware, you were 18 or 19 when you walked into the station?” said Benson.
“That’s only what they told me after they got a specialist to examine me.” said Daisy. “I had no idea how old I was.”
“That would make you 29 or 30 years old now.”
“29, according to my passport. But it’s all just a guess.”
“What about ancestry websites? You can submit a drop of blood or a swab from inside your cheek—I’m not sure exactly how it works—and they try to trace your ancestors.”
“I’ve tried all of them. They turn up distant relatives, but so distant that I’d hardly consider them relatives at all.”
“I see.” said Benson. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
She did mind, but she said “no” anyway. Benson proceeded to light a cigar that smelt to Daisy like burning horse dung.
“Stetley, eleven years ago.” said Benson thoughtfully.
“Do you think you can help me?” said Daisy.
“Possibly.”
“How much will it cost?”
He had already carefully assessed her likely personal wealth from her clothing, mannerisms, general appearance, and the car she drove. She wasn’t rich, but she was doing OK.
“Two thousand.” he said. “If I succeed. Otherwise, nothing.”
“I’ll pay it.” she said. “Gladly. I just want to know who I am.”
She could hear his footsteps ascending the stairs outside the door. Again she tried desperately to pull her hand out of the cuff, but she couldn’t manage it.
The door opened.
Again he stood there in the bloodstained lab coat. He looked to be on the verge of death; his face was horribly pale, almost yellow, and he seemed unsteady on his feet. With a gasp of horror, she saw that he was holding a hypodermic syringe.
“You haven’t eaten any of your food.” he said.
“Please …” she said, tears in her bloodshot eyes, “… let me go. I won’t tell anyone anything, I promise. I swear I won’t tell anyone.”
“If only you understood.” he said. “I haven’t any choice now. No more than you have. I can still fix everything. I really think I can. If you come peacefully I won’t even need to inject you.”
“Get away from me you freak!”
The man staggered towards her, swaying slightly.
He began to try to stick the needle in her, while she hit and kicked at him, desperately trying to fend him off.
“Please stop this.” said the man, almost crying. “Can’t you see I’m unwell? You must let me repeat the procedure!”
“Get off me!” she shouted, but he managed to plunge the needle into her ankle and depress the plunger halfway by the time she was able to land a kick in his face, sending him reeling backwards.
“I’ll kill you, you sick weirdo!” she screamed at him.
She hoped he would stay where he’d fallen on the floor and for some minutes it seemed as though that might be the case, but gradually he managed to crawl to a set of cupboards at the side of the room, which he then used to pull himself upright.
Meanwhile, she could feel the substance he had injected her with taking effect. She was having trouble focusing, and she was losing control of her limbs.
Again he began to stumble towards her with the syringe.
“Just another few mils.” he said. “Almost done. There’s no need to worry.”
She began to cry unrestrainedly.
“Why are you doing this to me?” she sobbed. “Let me go!”
“I’m sorry.” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
And with that, he injected her arm, and she blacked out.
Benson started by talking to some of his more senior former colleagues at Stetley.
“I remember her very well.” said Sergeant Wilson. “Poor lass. She was absolutely terrified. Ran into the station one evening. She was scared stiff of something, but she couldn’t remember what.”
“What did she remember?” asked Benson.
“Practically nothing. Couldn’t even remember her own name. The psych people had a look at her and as far as I know she was found to be sane, but suffering profound amnesia. They reckoned she was an adult. I think they put her in social housing. So you’re saying she’s now paying you to find out who she is?”
“That’s the situation.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Thank you, Charlie.” said Benson.
As Benson was leaving, Wilson said, “Hey, what about a hypnotist?”
“You what?”
“A hypnotist. We had a witness to a case who tried one once. Completely useless in the end, but maybe it’s worth a try.”
“Completely useless, you say?”
“He was trying to remember a car reg. but it didn’t help. Still, you never know.”
“Do you know his name?”
“The hypnotist? No but he’s got a practice out Morley way. Pretty easy to find. I drive past it every day. Always wonder what he’s up to.”
“It’s just pseudoscience though, isn’t it?” said Benson.
“No, not completely. There’s something to it. Like I say, long shot but it might be worth a try.”
Benson soon located Wilson’s hypnotist. The man ran a hypnotherapy practice out of a shabby-looking building on the main road leading from Morley to Stetley. Inside, a bored-looking receptionist sat painting her nails. When Benson entered she smiled brightly and asked what she could do for him.
“A client of mine needs some help recalling old memories.” said Benson.
“Oh!” said the woman. “Unusual. And you are?”
“The name’s Benson. I’m a private detective.”
“Really?” said the woman, with exaggerated interest.
“Do you think the hypnotherapist could help?”
“You can ask him if you want. He’s in the back. Go straight through.”
“He’s not with a client?”
“Bit of a quiet day.” said the woman, winking.
Benson opened a plain white door and emerged into a short dimly-lit corridor. At the end of the corridor was a thick bead curtain, which he pushed through, saying “Hello?”
At a small round table was a thickset man with longish lanky hair playing cards with himself.
“Welcome, welcome, my friend.” he said, without even looking up. He had a strong accent, which Benson judged to be Eastern European. “What can I do for you?”
“My name’s Benson. I’m a private detective, as I was just explaining to your receptionist. A client of mine has no memory of her life before the age of 18. She’d like help with recalling her memories. Do you do that sort of thing?”
Finally the man looked up, with gleaming eyes.
“Ahh!” he exclaimed. “You want me to … ahh … hypnotise her?”
“You’re a hypnotist, aren’t you?”
“I most certainly am.” said the man, rising to his feet. “I am Dr. Horvath János. You may call me Matsy. Forgive me, my friend. In my country we have saying, ‘the fence is not made of sausages’. You know what this means?”
“No?”
“It means, if you have a fence, you do not make it from sausage meat!”
Dr. Horvath exploded into peels of crazed laughter.
“Sorry, it’s just a little joke.”
He grasped Benson’s hand, pumping it firmly.
Benson’s face had developed a puzzled expression, as he inwardly tried to determine whether this man was sane enough to be useful, but he privately concluded that Horvath was probably par de course for a hypnotist, and his expression abruptly cleared.
“I’ll bring her in then.” he said.
“Good.” said Horvath, suddenly seriousness. “Please, make appointment with reception lady.”
He gestured towards the door that led to the receptionist with an expansive flowing gesture.
Benson turned around on the spot and headed back out through the bead curtain.
“Thanks for your time.” he said over his shoulder.
After he’d arranged the appointment and had stepped back outside into the cool summer air, he muttered, “Bunch of weirdos.” to himself and straightened his tie before proceeding on his way.
Three days later, Benson returned to the hypnotherapy practice with Daisy. They sat in the front reception area on plastic chairs, while the receptionist stared at them as she filed her nails.
“Has the doctor helped a lot of people?” asked Daisy nervously.
“Oh, yes!” said the receptionist. “He’s helped me enormously.”
She rolled her eyes back in her head as if to express overwhelming emotion.
“Really?” said Daisy. “In what way?”
“In every way.” said the receptionist, winking.
She continued staring at them expectantly and filing her nails for another five minutes, Benson and Daisy uncomfortably attempting to make conversation, with only the most peculiar results. Then the receptionist suddenly said, without any apparent external signal, “He’s ready for you now.”
“Will you come in with me?” Daisy said nervously to Benson.
“Of course.” Benson replied.
“Ahhh!” said Horvath, when they emerged from the bead curtain. “Please, sit down. I am to hypnotise both of you?”
“No, just Miss Smith.” said Benson.
“I can do it if you want.”
“That won’t be necessary.” said Benson.
Soon, Daisy was sitting at the table opposite Horvath, while Benson sat at the side in an armchair, observing quietly.
“Is your degree in hynoptherapy?” Daisy asked.
“Oh, no!” said Horvath. “It is in nuclear engineering. But I cannot obtain work in my country after the accident.”
“Accident?” said Daisy.
“It was not my fault. Don’t worry about it.”
Horvath took hold of Daisy’s hands.
“Look deeply into my eyes!” he said.
She peered anxiously into Horvath’s eyes, which were surmounted by a pair of enormously shaggy brown eyebrows.
“Do not look away!” said Horvath. “Do not speak until I tell you to speak. The horse has four legs and still stumbles! Do not react. Tick! Tock! Tick! Tock! Tick! Tock! There is only the present moment!”
And then, somehow, half an hour seemed to disappear. The next thing Daisy could remember was Benson rising to his feet and saying, “I’ll confess my expectations weren’t high, Dr. Horvath, but you’ve been most helpful.”
“It is my pleasure.” said Horvath. “Now I will take your hard-earned money!”
And he lapsed into a peel of loud laughter.
Dr. Horvath and his receptionist watched as Benson and Daisy left and got into Benson’s car.
“Another success, Dr. Horvath.” said the receptionist.
“Yes, fantastic work, Dr. Armitage.” said Horvath. “Did you stare at them unsettlingly as I requested?”
“I did.” said Armitage. “It appears your theories are absolutely correct.”
“The more they are unsettled, the more amenable they are to hypnotic suggestion.” said Horvath, smiling quietly in satisfaction. “Poor girl. I only hope she finds what she’s looking for.”
He watched as the car drove off, Dr. Armitage flipping through a medical journal to find one of the articles they had written together.
“I think we should make the storefront even more shabby.” said Horvath thoughtfully.
In Benson’s car, Daisy seemed half in a fugue, but the trance was gradually lifting and she was beginning to talk enthusiastically about her new memories.
“I remember a farmhouse.” she said. “I’m sure that’s where I was, before I found the police station. I think …” She frowned, a shiver running down her spine. “… I think I was being held there. I mean, as a prisoner. I think I escaped.”
“What do you remember about this farmhouse?”
She stared out of the car window, frowning. For some moments she was silent, then she said, “It was an old stone building. But I think it was painted white. There was something … some kind of strange thing nearby. A windmill! Maybe it was an old windmill.”
“What was the land like around this farmhouse?” asked Benson. “Hilly? Flat?”
“A bit hilly.”
“I wonder if you could be thinking of the windmill up near Spelford.” said Benson.
“There’s a windmill there?”
“There certainly is. About forty minutes from here. How are you doing for time?”
“Let’s go.” said Daisy.
They drove out of the town along winding country roads. The sky gradually turned grey, dark clouds obscuring the sun. As they approached the old windmill, Daisy became mesmerised by the surroundings.
“Do you recognise anything?” said Benson.
“It seems … familiar.” said Daisy.
Benson pulled up outside the windmill and Daisy stared at it curiously.
“I don’t know.” she said.
“We can explore a bit.”
“Is there a turning on the right later on?”
“I think so, if memory serves.” said Benson.
“Let’s go down there.”
Benson drove slowly further along the lane and turned right, Daisy looking around with a slightly wild expression in her eyes.
Soon the hedges at the side of the road disappeared, and in the distance was a cottage with white stone walls.
“Stop!” said Daisy. “That’s it! That’s where I escaped from!”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
When the young woman awoke, her hands were tied to either side of another narrow hospital bed with leather straps, and above her was poised an enormous machine.
“What’s going on?” she said groggily.
“I would have kept you sedated but the brain needs to be awake to tackle this properly.” said the old man.
She turned her head and, seeing his bloodstained lab coat, remembered where she was. She tried to scream, but due to the effects of the drug still in her bloodstream, the scream came out as a kind of frantic hissing.
The old man was flipping switches and turning dials, stumbling to and fro to check computer screens arranged at the side of the room.
“We’re almost ready.” he announced. “I’m sure I can get it right this time.”
“Please …” she said weakly. “I’m begging you …”
“It won’t hurt.” said the man. “A few moments of confusion, that’s all. I only wish I could explain properly but you’ll have to trust me.”
She yanked furiously, but weakly, at the straps that held her to the bed.
The enormous machine above her was slowly descending towards her head.
“They’ll catch you.” said the young woman, slurring her words. “You’ll spend the rest of your life in prison.”
“Don’t worry, my dear.” said the man. “Try to relax. Everything will be so much easier if you relax.”
The old man was swaying from side to side and wheezing.
“What are you doing with me? Why are you doing this?”
“We’re all ready now.” said the man. “I’ll start up the probe. Soon be over.”
Benson knocked firmly on the door, Daisy remaining behind in the car on his recommendation. A stressed-looking woman answered. Behind her were two boisterous children, demanding to know who was at the door.
“Be quiet a minute!” she shouted at the children. To Benson she said, “Sorry. They’re a handful.”
“Quite all right, ma’am.” said Benson. “Apologies for disturbing you. The name’s Benson. I’m a private detective.”
“I thought you were police.” said the woman.
“Used to be.” said Benson, a slight smile inadvertently appearing on his lips. “I’m trying trace someone who might have lived here. You don’t fit my profile, ma’am, but I wonder if you’d know anything about the previous inhabitants?”
“We’ve been here for over eight years.” she said. “Before that an elderly couple lived here. Don’t know much about them but they say the old man was a scientist. They disappeared, you know. Never seen again. Perhaps they ran off somewhere together.”
“They both disappeared?” said Benson.
“Yes, both at the same time. But that was long before we moved in.”
“Would you happen to know their names?”
“I’ve got an old newspaper article somewhere.” she replied. “I’ll look it out for you. Hang on a minute.”
Soon Benson was back in the car, and he and Daisy were examining the newspaper article.
“Ronald Aspen.” said Benson. “Physicist. Helen Aspen, artist.”
“They look … familiar somehow.” said Daisy, peering at the photograph of the old couple.
“How about the name? Does the name Aspen ring any bells?”
“Everything seems familiar. The house, the name, their faces … perhaps I’m imagining it. I’m not sure.”
“Look at the date of his disappearance.” said Benson, pointing at some text in the article.
“The day after I turned up at the police station.” said Daisy in surprise. “What does it all mean?”
“I don’t know.” said Benson. “I can certainly think of possibilities, but at the moment there’s no way to know if any of them are correct.”
“Such as?”
“What if you were in some kind of an accident with them? They were killed and never found, but you only lost your memory.”
He watched Daisy carefully, gauging her reaction.
“The doctors examined me thoroughly. They found no sign of trauma to my head. Nothing like that.”
“Well, it’s just an idea.” said Benson. “Still, it’s possible, given the coincidence of the dates, that you either knew them—perhaps they’re even relatives—or …”
“Or what?” said Daisy.
“Well, best not to speculate.” said Benson. “What I need to do now is, I need to track down people who knew the Aspens. Find out a bit more about them. Leave it to me.”
It didn’t take long for Benson to locate a relative of the Aspens. In fact, he found their son, who was almost sixty years old. Gerald Aspen lived in a modest rather ancient house in a nearby village and taught mathematics at the the university in town. His beard was almost white and he wore round spectacles and smiled with unusual warmth for a mathematician.
Gerald’s wife, Masha, was Russian; tall and angular, with black hair, and somewhat younger than Gerald. She plied Benson with Russian pastries and coffee while he talked to Gerald in the couple’s living room.
“It was a shock when my parents disappeared.” said Gerald. “We’ve never stopped searching for them but, unfortunately, my research on non-Euclidean topologies has been rather more successful than my efforts to find my parents.”
Benson’s gazed flicked between the photographs of the Aspens that he’d managed to assemble over the past few days, and Gerald’s face. There was a definite resemblance, but something bothered him about their appearance. He needed some silence to think about it. He made a mental to consider the matter later on.
“You’ve never managed to unearth any clues as to what might have happened to them?”
“Too many clues, in a way.” said Gerald. “If you want to know what I think, I think my parents accidentally disassembled themselves.”
“Come again?” said Benson.
“I know it sounds mad.” said Gerald. “My parents left a house filled with my father’s scientific equipment and journals.”
Masha Aspen sat down on the sofa next to Gerald.
“Gerald’s father was a genius.” she said. “Like Gerald.”
“Well, I don’t know about that.” said Gerald modestly, smiling. “My father was working on technology that manipulated matter at the subatomic level. Organic matter particularly interested him. Imagine what you could do if you could seamlessly rearrange organic matter, the very stuff we’re made of. You could cure almost any illness.” Gerald looked down at the floor, his expression suddenly darkening slightly. “And you see, my mother was desperately ill. She had cancer of the brain. The doctors said she had another three months at the most.”
“You think they committed suicide?” Benson asked.
“No.” said Gerald, looking up with a brief smile. “I think it’s possible that he accidentally created some kind of field that rearranged the matter of their bodies into some concentrated form. Perhaps he pushed his experiments too far. I think he courted danger. His beloved wife, my mother, was dying, and he himself was suffering serious heart disease. He probably felt he had little to lose. Probably one of his experiments went horribly wrong, and, well, they turned themselves into air, or pure carbon.”
“We found blocks of carbon in the house.” said Masha. “Large blocks of black carbon, with a very unusual atomic structure. As if …”
Suddenly something clicked in Benson’s brain, and he realised what was bothering him. There was a definite family resemblance between Gerald and Daisy. Once he’d noticed it, he could not unsee it. These two, he was sure, were members of the same family.
“Would you consider agreeing to a DNA test?” said Benson.
Gerald’s face registered mild surprise.
“If you think it’ll help.” he said. “May I ask why?”
“I’d like to check a theory I have.” said Benson. “At the moment I can’t be more specific, but if my theory proves correct, I’ll be sure to let you know right away.”
The machine poised above the young woman began to make a loud whirring sound. The woman felt her mental processes blur, as though she had been given another shot of sedative. The old man said, “I need to reduce the cross-field slighty.” and he turned towards a panel of controls, but at that moment he grasped his chest and fell to the floor, wheezing horribly.
Seeing her chance, the woman began biting at the straps that held her wrists to the side of the bed. The man looked up, deathly pale, and gestured towards her as though imploring her to stop, but then he collapsed into a heap on the floor, face down.
The room seemed to whirl around her, but she concentrated on the strap holding her right wrist. It seemed to grow until it filled her entire remaining field of vision.
She managed to pull out one of the straps and, pulling on it with her teeth, loosened it from her wrist. Then she frantically undid the other strap and staggered away from the bed holding on to anything she could find to support her.
She stumbled up a flight of steps, emerging into a somewhat rustic kitchen, and from there she pushed open a thick wooden door.
She found herself facing a rolling vista of green fields and hills. In the distance, part of some strange structure was visible; perhaps the side of an old windmill. She lurched forward into a carefully-tended garden, filled with flowers and, after twice falling to the ground and picking herself up again, she opened a garden gate and half-fell through it.
When her mind eventually began to clear slightly, she was walking along a quiet country lane, and she realised with a start that she had no idea where she was or what she was doing there. She couldn’t even remember her own name.
Almost panicking, she quickened her pace, sometimes running, until, an hour later, she arrived in a small village. There she saw a woman pushing twins in a pushchair. She ran to the woman crying, “Please help me! I don’t know who I am!”
Benson stared uncomprehendingly at the results from the lab. After ordering the initial DNA tests he’d ordered more, then he’d turned to experts to explain the results, then different experts in case the first lot were mistaken, and they always came back with the same reply.
Obviously, it was impossible.
He tried sleeping on the problem, but when he awoke it was just as puzzling as before.
It was a week before he managed to think up a possible solution. It was a solution so outrageous, so ridiculous, that he struggled to take it seriously. But after all, hadn’t Sherlock Holmes said that when one eliminates the impossible, whatever’s left must be fact? And he should know.
“That’s a fictional character, you idiot.” Benson said to himself, out loud.
He decided to proceed as if the DNA results, however incredible, were actually correct, and not some curious mistake. In that case, there was probably another of them wandering about out there somewhere. Perhaps initially he had taken fright and had deliberately hidden himself from the authorities, but sooner or later he too would have become curious about his own identity and then he would likely have had recourse to ancestry services.
With Gerald’s permission, he sent off Gerald’s DNA to an online service and waited for the results.
Two weeks later, he logged onto the website, sitting next to Gerald in his living room, Masha sitting on Gerald’s other side.
“That’s him.” said Benson.
“That’s clearly not my father.” said Gerald.
“It is my contention that perhaps that actually is your father.” said Benson.
“He must be using some else’s photograph then.” said Gerald.
Benson rubbed the side of his cheek with his hand thoughtfully.
“How much do you actually know about your father’s work?” he asked.
“Not much more than I’ve already told you.” said Gerald. “I have some of his old journals from the house if that’s any use.”
“I suggest we peruse them carefully.” said Benson.
“Are you going to contact this man?” said Masha.
“That’s my plan.” said Benson.
“And what then?” said Gerald.
“It might be rather interesting to get him together with Daisy.”
“Rather interesting.” echoed Gerald. “That’s the understatement of the year.”
“Can we meet him too?” said Masha.
“Of course you can.” said Benson. “If he agrees. I can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to.”
Ronald Aspen gazed out of the window at the herd of cows in the adjoining field with tears in his eyes.
“It’s not ready, yet, Helen.” he said. “I’ve done everything I can. I’ve done everything.”
Helen laid a hand on the old man’s arm, reaching up from the wheelchair where she sat.
A tube under her nose, connected to a gas cylinder, kept her supplied with extra oxygen.
“I haven’t got much longer, Ron.” she said. “I could have another attack at any moment, and that’ll be the end of me.”
“Perhaps it’s wrong, what I’m trying to do.” said Ronald. “What do we really know about death? We don’t know where consciousness comes from. How can we know where it goes? What if we’re like a baby that doesn’t want to be born?”
“What if we die and that’s the end of us forever?” said Helen. “I want you to try, Ron. I’ve nothing to lose now.”
Ronald Aspen sighed heavily.
“I’ll try it on myself first.” he said.
“No.” said Helen firmly. “If you … if it goes wrong, then you won’t be able to help either of us. Try it on me. Do the best you can.”
“It could destroy your brain, or leave you with profound amnesia.” said Ronald desperately.
“Losing my memories is better than losing my life.” said Helen. “We can make new memories, Ron. If I’m gone, I’m gone. It’s all over then.”
“All right.” said Ronald quietly. “We’ll do it. If you’re sure that’s what you want.”
“I’m sure.”
Getting her down to the cellar proved difficult. He was too weak to carry her. He had to bump the wheelchair down one step at a time. When he reached the bottom, he cried out in pain, clutching his heart.
“Ron, are you OK? You’re bleeding!” Helen exclaimed.
Blood was pouring from his nose, covering his lab coat.
“It’s the warfarin.” he said.
He took a little bag containing tablets from the top pocket of his lab coat and took out a pill with trembling hands, placing it under his tongue.
“I’ll be OK in a minute.” he said.
“Be strong.” said Helen. “You have to be strong, for both of us.”
He held up the palm of his hand, as if to say, “I know, I know.” and stood leaning against an instrument table for some moments, catching his breath. Finally he straightened up.
“OK.” he said. “I’ll take you to the machine.”
Helen lay down underneath the enormous device and waited patiently and calmly as Ronald operated the controls to lower it closer to her body.
“I’m going to start with the most minimal changes usefully possible.” he said.
“Whatever you feel is best.” said Helen. “I trust you.”
He flicked a series of switches and carefully adjusted several dials, then he took a key from his pocket, placed it in a little lock, and turned it. A large red button underneath a plastic cover lit up, and he flipped the plastic lid and, with a final affectionate but anxious glance at Helen, pressed the button.
The next thing Ronald Aspen remembered was when he woke up on the floor, in a pool of his own blood. He staggered to his feet, then recalled what he’d been doing when he fainted, and he hit the red button and ran to Helen.
She was alive, but the process had clearly gone too far. Helen appeared scarcely more than eighteen years old.
“Helen!” he said, in a panic, rubbing her arm. “Helen, my love!”
Helen slowly opened her eyes, and screamed. She leapt off the bed and began to pick things up and hurl them at Ronald.
“Helen, it’s me!” he shouted, as a glass beaker bounced off the arm he’d raised to protect his face, and smashed, scattering broken glass everywhere.
She grabbed a jar from the the laboratory bench and raised it above her head.
“Helen, no! It’s concentrated acid!”
He only barely had time to dive out of the way before the jar of acid bounced on the floor where’d he’d been standing, mercifully remaining intact.
Helen was screaming derangedly.
“My head!” she shouted. “What’s wrong with my head?”
As he watched, she sank gradually to the floor, thrashing and sobbing in evident terrible pain.
Ronald seized his chance. He quickly filled a syringe with a sedative and staggered towards Helen, wheezing.
At the last moment she saw him and began hitting him and shouting, but he managed to get the needle into her shoulder somehow, and she spread out on the ground, semi-conscious.
“Don’t worry, Helen.” he said. “I can fix this. It’s just a problem with brain metabolism. The process went too far. I fainted. I’m so sorry.”
Once he’d got her back in the machine, he scanned her thoroughly, and carefully analysed all the changes the machine had wrought in her. There was no longer any sign of cancer. It was only that the blood supply wasn’t quite right in certain parts of her brain.
He switched on the machine and had it rearrange her brain slightly. Then, after giving her another injection, he put her back in the wheel chair and pulled it slowly and painfully up the cellar steps.
Soon she was lying in the bed the hospital had delivered for her six months ago.
“But I won’t really know how she is till she’s conscious.” he muttered to himself.
The thought of her waking up and violently thrashing around again scared him, and it was then that he remembered a pair of handcuffs he’d bought a decade ago after reading a book on Houdini, curious as to whether he could teach himself to break out of them.
He fixed one cuff to the bed rail and put the other loosely around her wrist.
It was only after Helen awoke that he discovered that, while the pain and general derangement had been successfully cured, she had no idea who he was.
He thought carefully about the matter, and decided that, while the memory loss might well be permanent, it could also be due to insufficient blood to the hippocampus. He reluctantly resolved to try one more treatment with the machine.
He had to sedate her again to get her back into the machine, but in the end, he succeeded. Unfortunately, Ronald’s own medical problems intervened. He awoke to find himself on the floor again, and Helen gone.
When he attempted to rise to his feet, his heart beat wildly and erratically, and this time the tablets didn’t help. In enormous pain and shaking like a leaf, he managed to pull himself up far enough to set the controls on the machine. He wouldn’t be able to make any fine adjustments, or even, really, coarse adjustments, but the machine was now his only hope for remaining alive.
He passed out again while setting the machine. After waking, he hit the red button, only just managing to reach up far enough to do it, then he used his last remaining strength to crawl to the treatment bed. There, he passed out, his lungs gave one last gasp, and his heart stopped.
The machine, however, knew what to do. It carefully rearranged his heart and restarted it. Bit by bit, it remoulded and remade Ronald Aspen, even working on his brain to remove the effects of ageing.
When Ronald awoke, he had no idea who or where he was, and he found himself lying underneath an enormous machine which had since turned itself off but was still poised ominously above him.
Terrified, he jumped off the bed and gazed in horror at the apparatus in the cellar. It seemed that some mad scientist must be experimenting on him. He tore off the bloodstained lab coat and bolted up the cellar steps. Then he flung open the front door of the house, and ran for his life.
Via a curious stroke of luck—whether good or bad is perhaps unclear—he happened to come upon a car that had been left temporarily unattended, with the keys in the ignition, while its owner had gone to inspect one of her horses in a nearby field.
He jumped into the car and drove off.
When he ran out of fuel six hours later, he pulled up in a lay-by and checked the car carefully for anything that might be useful to him. By then he could only vaguely remember the house he’d escaped from, although the memory of the cellar laboratory itself was still vivid, as was the fact that he had stolen a car.
He found a small quantity of cash in the glove box, and very little else.
That night he slept on a park bench, nervously watching for police.
Thus began Ronald Aspen’s new life, as a now-young homeless man, potentially wanted by the authorities for car theft.
Unpromising as his new start in life was, Ronald Aspen’s ferocious natural intelligence soon helped him to find his feet, and by the end of the year he was working as a kitchen porter, cash in hand, under an assumed identity.
Eleven years later, he had acquired a doctorate in physics—his second, although he couldn’t remember the first—and he was living in a modest house in the suburbs. He had never ceased to wonder about his previous life, only fragments of which had returned to him, but he had come to terms with the situation.
In the end, after several iterations and refinements, Benson’s theory corresponded more or less to these actual events. Incredible though the theory certainly was, it neatly explained everything, as even Daisy, her ostensible son Gerald, and his wife Masha, had to agree.
One autumn day, Benson and Daisy pulled up outside a modest house, where a strange young man—a physicist—lived alone with his dog. The gravel on the little driveway crunched under the car’s wheels as Benson brought the car to a stop.
A leaf from a tree in the garden next door blew against the windscreen, together with a few tiny drops of drizzle.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” said Benson. “You can still change your mind. If my theory is correct, he probably won’t recognise you, nor you him.”
“I need to meet him.” said Daisy firmly. “We were married for fifty years, weren’t we? Of course I need to meet him.”
“Well, you’re the client.” said Benson.
He got out of the car and, while Daisy was still steeling her nerves, went around and opened the door for her.
She glanced at him, suddenly jolted out of her reverie, and got out.
They went to the door, and Benson knocked firmly.
From inside came a shout and a yelp, as Aspen—living under the name Steven Smith—tripped over his dog. Then they listened to Aspen consoling his dog and apologising to it.
Finally, Aspen opened the door.
“Steven Smith?” said Benson.
“Yes.” said the man, faintly, staring awestruck at Daisy.
“My name’s Benson. I’m a —”
But Benson didn’t have time to finish the sentence before the pair of them flung themselves into each other’s arms.
“Helen!” said Ronald.
“Ron!” said Helen.
