Futures : A hypertext short story

4A: Counterpart

There were two Ł5 notes on his psionic amplifier; one quite new and neatly folded at the Comparator Gate, the other old and limply open at the Output Gate. He stared down at them for a long time, thinking about bizarre optical illusions and people seeing things that weren't there because they wanted to see them.
   At last, he reached out a wary finger and touched the Ł5 note at the Output Gate. It felt real enough. He picked it up to examine it more closely. The note had received a lot of use and it had a faintly sour smell, as if it had been lurking somewhere damp and not too pleasant for a long time.
   Encouraged by his success, Darnby set the note to one side and sat down at the table. Wearing his headphones and eyes closed, he placed his index fingers on the Output Gate of his psionic amplifier and willed more money to appear at the Output Gate. At intervals, he opened his eyes a crack to check on his progress.
   Nothing happened. After another ten minutes, he abandoned the experiment. Breakfast had a higher priority than wasting time. But as he sliced bread to make toast, he resolved to attempt at intervals throughout the day to recover more lost fivers.
   If the unlikely gadget had worked once, it could do so again...

Michael Darnby trawled one more Ł5 note during a day of intermittent attempts. It was as old and as smelly as the first one, and he summoned it under similar circumstances. The time was early evening; around half past six. He felt drained of energy for no particular reason. He found himself yawning. His eyes felt gritty and their lids were starting to droop.
   The internal fires need stoking, he decided. Food equals energy. He would be wide awake again after his evening meal, but he could hear a timer ticking away in the kitchen. His re-heated dinner of odds and ends would not be hot enough until the timer rang.
   He decided to continue his efforts to recreate his grand achievement for the moment. Wearing his stereo headphones, unplugged, and touching the Input Gate of his psionic amplifier with his index fingers, he allowed his eyes to fall shut.
   A loud ringing ripped him from a light doze. And there it was, just waiting for him to notice it: another sad, old fiver, treasure-trawled to boost Michael Darnby's shattered local economy.
   Over dinner, he started to lay a foundation of theory for the mode of operation of his psionic amplifier. The very best time to operate it, paradoxically, seemed to be on the edge of sleep, or perhaps during light doze, when the paranormal forces of his subconscious were liberated.
   And if the amplifier itself was a symbol, just ink lines on a sheet of graph paper, perhaps he could take that concept a step further. One of the clearing banks had advertised its services in the paper that day. He cut out a picture of an impossible sum in notes and coins. Somewhere among his souvenirs was a fairly recent photograph of himself. He had needed one for an identity card and the photo-booth had supplied a strip of four.
   Before climbing into bed that night, he set out his psionic amplifier on the bedroom carpet. He placed the newspaper picture of a vast fortune across the Comparator Gate, then he decided to glue it down to ensure a good contact between the picture and the big-dot terminals. He did the same with his own photograph at the Input Gate. The pseudo-scientific symbology was complete now.
   He attempted to go to sleep thinking about his experiment in order to direct his dreams to the right area. With any luck, he told himself, there would be a few thousand ancient fivers waiting for him in the morning...

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