Free Threshold Shift by G. D. Tinnams Page A

Jacob’s hand in his own. Jacob smiled
as he felt the reassuring squeeze, and then his son left. He was
alone, and with the door closed, the room seemed to rotate around
him, the acceleration making him feel dizzy. He closed his eyes, or
they closed themselves, they were so heavy, it was an effort to keep
them open anyhow.
    Sleep
came quickly.

    *

    He
dreamt of a man who lived in a prison, the bars splintering sunlight
through the small window high above. The man stared often at that
window, oblivious to all the shouts and insults from the surrounding
cells, ignoring even the loud tirade of the fat cellmate in the bunk
below. He was waiting, simply killing time, the people around him of
no interest whatsoever. He had murdered and he was being punished,
sure to be an old man before he was ever free again. But what was
that freedom worth? He would be empty, empty and alone. He waited
anyway, his eyes on that window, waiting to take his place in the
world again.
    Then
something happened he had not expected. They brought their questions,
sitting him and the other prisoners in the cafeteria to answer them.
    Endless
questions:
    (What
is your favourite colour?)
    (What
is your favourite pet?)
    Pointless
questions which he answered anyway. The rewards were better food,
more time outside, even limited alcohol. How easily his cooperation
was bought. He was killing time, but he could kill it well and there
was no cost, except to answer more of their questions.
    One
night that changed. With his eyes on the moonlight streaming through
the window, the guards arrived and hauled him out of his bunk. He was
beaten a little, just for old time’s sake, and then they
delivered him, battered and bruised, to a waiting ambulance. A nurse
tended to him, sedated him, as a doctor in a white coat looked on,
busily making notes on a clipboard.
    “Why?”
The man asked before the sedative took hold.
    “Because,”
the doctor replied with a smile. The prisoner struggled against his
restraints, but the sedative took him, and he slept.

    *

    Jacob
opened his eyes, the smell of the prison and the ambulance still
clouding his nostrils. It had been a long time since he had thought
of that place and he had buried it deep. To his right the night stars
cast a pale blue light through the barred window. How familiar that
was. The buzzing in his ear had returned, but he could cope with it.
The pain in his head also remained bearable as long as he didn’t
move. When he did, the pain was like a dead weight in the back of his
skull. Around him the room was steady, but he had to keep still or it
would spin out of control. There was nothing else he could do.
    If he
had agreed to have Espirnet implanted he could have been watching
entertainment from a programme pool that spanned more than a dozen
planets. But he had never wanted it, no, he had been happy to be the
sole inhabitant in his own head, not some linked in appendage to a
vast network. Somehow that would have felt like a reduction. Of
course Jon had it fitted as soon as he had language skills, all the
children did. How else could the boy attend virtual schooling? Jacob
sighed. Perhaps he should have been stronger, insisted on console
learning and spared his boy. But Eleanor had insisted and he never
could say no to her. She could sway him when so many others could
not. His will was nothing to her.
    In
his memory he watched her, a red-haired beauty in a white dress,
laughing as she sat down for a picnic in their garden. Nearby, their
toddler son was running frantically in circles after consuming too
much caffeinated drink. He laughed with her, sitting on the grass
next to her, their hands entwined. He was happy then, he couldn’t
remember being any happier than that day. There was no cloud in the
sky, no duties awaiting him, nothing but Eleanor, Jon and laughter.
He didn’t want to let go.
    The
scene changed to a cold and grey morning a few years later. He was in
the same garden, but Jon was gone, and Eleanor