Rex Proctor stares at the newly empty space in front of him as his PC closes down. The translucent screen has vanished and he can hear the main cooling fan in the tower below the desk quickly stop whirring. It seems his world is following suit. It is as though Rex Proctor has just been told he can restart his life, but he has to be the one to press the button to initiate the operating system.
He takes a deep breath, aware of the tension in his shoulders. Because Rex has just discovered that he is not alone. He is not the only one. As long as Jay Diamond is as he says – a toy Colobus monkey come to life – then Rex can also come out of hiding as an unreal entity in a real world and they can plan together how best to survive. Jay seems to be coping remarkably well by himself, however, and doesn't appear to need to befriend Rex, so much so that Rex still remains suspicious.
"Know your enemy," he says. "It always pays to know your enemy."
There is still the possibility that Jay is not who he says he is. But it is an admission Rex suspected he might make.
"Look out for bobby-traps, my boy. Look out. Always keep your eye open."
It is too easy to hide behind an avatar and false personality on-line and Rex has been trained to remain cautious however good the signs are.
Because that's what the best trained soldiers are: the best.
And yet, these days, the best can be enhanced.
He sits back and closes his eyes. His memories are difficult. War is humanity's animal voice and wise people have cursed it ever since an ancient humanoid picked up a branch at one end and felt the power of extended reach. And the technology of war always moves on, always evolves as some perverse example of Darwin's theories. He is such an example.
The original Rex Proctor policed ideas. In the past, some might have referred to him and his ilk as paramilitary instruments of The State, but the invented constant fight against terrorism blurred the distinction between armed police and soldiers.
And The State insisted some ideas just had to be stopped from gaining traction. George Orwell may have used the term Thought Police, but Rex lived it.
He led his team on special missions into other countries, seeking out people posting dangerous information on-line and thinking they were safe.
He led his team in secret black operations where they committed acts of armed insurrection against his own country to keep the war top of the political agenda.
And he led his team into housing estates in Britain where the opposition would be wearing everyday clothes and looking just like everyone else. It could be easy to neutralise the wrong target.
But collateral damage has been the consequence of total war for years.
He opens his eyes and look at the space where the screen had been.
Entrepreneurs, with links to the military, looked at the economics of using real, sometimes fragile people in combat, and experimented with alternatives other than robots. The irony was that they experimented on the Mind Brigade first.
3D printers have advanced from producing plastic guns anytime and anywhere you want – only idiots try to smuggle weapons across borders. You can now generate a flesh and blood version of a living creature, even a real-life, breathing, walking, talking, defecating person, if you have enough stem cell glop. So why not, the entrepreneurs reasoned, produce an expendable version of someone you've invested millions in training and save money when the inevitable accident and damage occurs to the copy? They called them recomps. The public called them Cloans: Clones on Loan. What could go wrong with that?
Rex Proctor believed he knew. The soldier is convinced that at some time in the recent past, some genius did some further lateral thinking and thought it would be a wonderful, profitable idea to put a soldier's mind and soul into a Cloan toy to sell to children – the ultimate action-figure.
And until a few moments ago, when he listened to Jay's explanation, he thought that that was what had happened to him. To explain his predicament.
Sergeant Rex Proctor, of the British Mind Brigade, was convinced that less than one month ago his mind had been uploaded into a one-and-a-half metre tall toy and he had been left to fend for himself by some forgetful owner dazzled by another new toy.
But then he found Jay Diamond's blog. And got to know him. The toy-come-to-life hinted at it in the encrypted emails they exchanged, before revealing the truth just now. Most of what Rex Proctor believed was true, Jay told him, he had been a toy with an artificial mind copied from an original human source, but something else had happened. Something beautiful and terrifying and Grand and Strange.
Rex Proctor has got his soul back.
He just needs to find out what to do with it.
And in other news:
I have now cycled over 3000 miles this year.
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