The Man Who Jumped

She’s pushing at the handle of the Coffee Haus door a good three attempts before she spots the sign next to it and sheepishly rearranges the items under her right arm to enable her to pull it open. I’m sitting in the corner watching her struggle. Maybe I should help but then it’s over and she’s inside, shaking water droplets from her umbrella.

Looking around the dim interior of the Coffee Haus, past the wall clock showing a quarter past four, the coffee serving girl behind the counter who is preoccupied with a Dutch copy of Bridget Jones and the young backpacker couple talking animatedly about Pete’s sleepwalking adventures in the Flying Pig Hostel, whoever the unfortunate Pete is. She settles on me. “Is it David?” “Yes. It’s Sophie, isn’t it?” “Sophia Groesbeck. Sorry I’m late…Had a call about a piece at the Rijksmuseum. Thought it was a Rembrandt sketch from someone’s attic. Turned out to be a nothing piece.” She mumbles, as much to herself as me.

Sophia starts to unload rain soaked notes onto one of the two spare chairs at the table and hangs her umbrella up by the handle on the back of it. Sitting opposite me she places a 2019 season Louis Vuitton bag that could well be one of the imitations the African guys sell on the streets here. I take her in for the first time. Blonde hair, medium brown at the roots, Blue eyes, pale complexion. Reasonably attractive. I stand up and offer to take her coat, a long pale faux suede affair not suited to the rigours of a stormy afternoon in November. She takes a silver ball point pen from an inside pocket before acquiescing the coat to me, which I then walk over and hang up next to mine on the coat rack near the door.

When I come back she’s offering a hand. We shake hands and I sit down, with her opposite me. “Hold on David, while I get this set up. You don’t mind if I make a recording do you?” I tell her that no, I don’t mind. The Counter girl has decided to eschew the virtues of a well worn copy of Bridget’s diary and come over by this point. Would I like another Coffee she asks. “Yes, thanks. I’ll have a Cappuccino. Medium” I say, indicating medium with a meaningless hand gesture of thumb and forefinger. Turning to Sophia “Would you like a coffee? Get you warmed up a bit” “Same as you. Two Cappuccinos, please.”

The counter girl asks if there’s anything else and then disappears into her world of coffee beans and frothy low cholesterol soya for a moment. A phone rings, a tune from a kids show in the 1990’s and one of the backpackers is laughing at her boyfriend’s bad taste. Sophia produces a small wireless PC microphone from her bag and then pulls out an iPod. It looks like an old 2 Terabyte model in Leopard pattern. “I use this to record. Don’t get on with the 20/20 ones” she says, placing the microphone on the table and working the controls of the iPod to set it up.

This allows my eyes to wander, to the window with the acidic storm rain making dot-dot morse code patterns as it runs diagonally towards the ground. Outside, people with umbrellas and other less fortunate souls make their weary way, dodging the charms of The Red Light District not far from where I sit. Not a great day to be sat behind a window looking at punters, I think. “So, David. It’s recording now.” Sophia indicates the iPod which she places on the table in front of her. Bridget Jones returns with two chocolate sprinkled Cappuccinos plus the obligatory small plain piece of chocolate next to them and places one each in front of us. I say thanks, she nods and goes back to her book. Backpacker boy is telling someone back home about Pete’s embarrassing incident in the Hostel. “Okay, I got this message from Clara at The Times in London to come and see you. She mentioned something about race fixing and the Mafia.”

"That’s right. I couldn’t see Clara because chances are they’re keeping an eye on London. I’m probably going to be tracked to Holland before long.” “Right. Clara is..” Sophia tails off, making it a question. “Old college friend. I was doing Computer Science and she was doing Journalism. I used to give her a hand” “I understand it was a bit more than that. She sounded a bit concerned for you. Anyway, I owe her a favour. So, race fixing and the mafia. Care to enlighten me?” Sophia raises an eyebrow, Curious but sceptical. I take a look around. Maybe I chose the wrong place. But the girl behind the counter and the traveller couple seem harmless enough. A wet Rastafarian in a top with Jamaican colours splashed over it studies the price board outside but moves on.

“I’d best start at the beginning,” I say “I hope that thing’s batteries hold out. Are you going to write any notes?” Sophia takes a sip from the Cappuccino, dabbing froth from her top lip carefully with the paper tissue that came with the drink and shakes her head. “I might, later.” “Okay. About 3 years ago I was on my first job after leaving University. I wound up at this place near Camden doing games development work. Nothing glamourous, they left all the testing and design stuff to the kids. I was doing the game engines and it was all pretty mindless stuff. Earned enough to buy myself a PC from parts and throw the thing together myself after a couple of months. Guess I spend too much time on the things.” I smile, circling my eyes with my forefinger to indicate my Lasik eye job.

“Anyway, one way or another I ended up hacking. Downloading little pieces of software that would ping these computers until it found one with no password on the administrator. Fun way to spend an evening.“ Sophia nods, takes a sip from her Cappuccino. I try mine. “One night I was looking around the data at the American Ministry of Defense on the WNet. I wasn’t the only one. Just poking about to see if there was anything cool and I came across this series of feasibility studies on Astral Projection. I’m reading this stuff and it’s about the art of Meditation and Astral Projection and a lot of things but the gist is the ability to concentrate the power of the mind to influence others.”

“Why would the military be interested in that?” Sophia looks quizzically across the table at me. “To control enemy soldiers, by the look of it, but the trials had been abandoned for some reason in the seventies.” “Riiight” Sophia says, as she takes another draw on her cup of coffee.

“Here’s the thing,” I say “They tried 3 sets of subjects. Normal and healthy, autistic or schizophrenic and subjects with past or existing brain tumours. One of the third set exhibited some unusual activity in parts of the brain that aren’t usually accessed on a conscious level. They’d put 4 shapes in front of a random soldier and this guy could guess which the soldier would pick nearly two thirds of the time.” Sophia tries to do a bit of math. “But maybe it could be chance…” She tails off, not sure where this talk about hacking and brain tumours is going. “The thing is, I had a lump the size of a golf ball removed when I was six. Can’t remember much of it, but that’s what caught my interest. I downloaded a lot of this stuff and tried the shapes experiment with a couple of the guys from work.”

“And you found out you could do this” scepticism in Sophia’s voice, inside maybe she’s rolling her eyes. I decide I’m going to have to give her a demonstration. “No, not at all. It was afterwards, back at home that it happened. I was relaxing, laid out on my bed looking up at the ceiling and I got this funny, disconnected feeling. For a second I’m looking down on myself. It was the weirdest thing. I went straight to the sink and threw up.” “Uh-huh” “I’m getting to the point. I know, you don’t have to believe this but what I’m about to tell you is very unusual.”

“Okay, okay. Look, I’m listening,” She sits back in her chair and looks at me with a time pressed irritation about her, places an empty coffee cup onto her saucer.

“I went back to the bed, relaxed, and it happened again. This time I was seeing myself from the window. Just a couple of seconds and then I’m back in my body. First thing I do is check out the window and there’s nobody watching me from outside or anything. And that’s when I notice the fly.”

After a pause “You were the fly? Is this what you’re saying?”

“A bit more than that. At the time I saw what it saw, yes. But after a day’s trying to do this again I found I was actually jumping inside the fly and that I could make it go where I wanted.”

She gives me a ‘that’s nuts’ look. “So I have your word for it you can pilot a housefly? Anything else? Spiders? Dogs?”

“Of course.” I sit back in my chair and concentrate. Eyes glaze. Sophia starts to laugh. I hear her opposite me and then more distant as I view our table from the perspective of the waitress. The waitress smokes, I can taste it. She puts down the book she is reading and reaches for a napkin. Sophia is laughing still and waving her hand in front of my eyes. “You’re shitting me! You should see someone! I’m going to go now, alright?” She’s half out of her chair, making a move.

The waitress walks over to the table and takes Sophia’s pen from it. Sophia protests but the waitress starts to write, shielding the napkin from Sophia. With a flourish, the waitress shows Sophia what she’s written. I AM TELLING THE TRUTH “Hhhhhhhhhh!!!!”

Sophia is sitting in front of me as I gulp for air. Behind her, the waitress lets out a shriek of surprise and drops the pen.