Rainbow

If you were to ask me, plainly, and I absolutely had to give you an answer, regardless of where it came from, I’d say that blue is cold. I’d say that blue is cold, and maybe more specifically, blue is water – but only in the range of cold to lukewarm. When water gets hot, it somehow ceases to be blue anymore. Goes clear, or whatever. Red is hot, but hot water isn’t ever thought of as red, go figure. Blue is the clean Adriatic, it’s Lake Louise or the balmy Med. It’s cornflowers, it’s Wedgewood China, which if you pay attention, even feels blue, rough but perfectly even under the pads of your fingers when you touch it. Blue can be joyous, and blue can be mournful. It’s a versatile facet of creation, but then isn’t everything?

If blue can be mournful, well, we’ve got yellow for happiness. The glorious touch of the sun on your face, first thing. In the far east, yellow is courage, elsewhere, cowardice. It’s sunflowers, daffodils, the unique burn of mustard of your tongue. Teamed with black, together they mean danger, and this, I’ve been told, is the most visible combination of colours to the human eye.

The spectrum is enormous, I’ve been through it in it’s minutiae many, many times. Every colour has it’s associations, physical and otherwise, and elicits it’s own reactions. I know all of their names. So when I hear about the colour blue, on the nano scale of perception I might feel a tiny chill, or the waves of some tropical sea lapping at my shoulder as I slip between them. Green, and I might catch the scent of cut grass after the rain, or the sharp, fresh taste of a lime plucked straight from the branch in some Balearic garden. Might feel the fragile, precious crinkle of American money in my hands.

Little samples, learned things, reference points on a chart built up over a lifetime of experience – only perceptible under the absolute closest scrutiny, fleeting but significant. Tiny dots, that when joined together, create a substantial whole. We can’t help but react to stimulus, our every thought is built upon it. We don’t get a choice in the matter.

To say that I’m familiar with the concept is a pretty big understatement, but Hugh seems to have forgotten that this morning, as he breaks it down for me while we walk. He shows me through a gate he’s holding open, as though I didn’t know it was there.

‘Thanks,’ I say, heavy with irony, but he doesn’t hear me.

‘You can’t help it – you’ll think a certain thing in response to whatever input you’re given. If I say to you now “How do your toes feel?” you’ll automatically think about your toes. Doesn’t matter if they feel good, bad or indifferent – doesn’t matter if they’re missing, you will think about your toes. That much is predictable, and that’s all Rainbow needs. It prods, and you respond in a way it can predict, and over the course of many millions of prods, it’s gotten very good at making predictions. We call it Rainbow because –‘

‘– because the early data was collected based on reactions to colour.’

‘Reactions to the names of colours. It has to be the names, the words themselves that describe the colours – your brain has to create this stuff to translate the word, and feed the concept behind it to your mind in a way it understands.’

I tut,

‘Names of colours then. It’s called Rainbow because the early data was collected based on people’s reactions to hearing the names of colours read out to them.’

‘It’s called Rainbow, because it uses the gestalt effects of multiple types of input to generate specific thoughts and or feelings. A rainbow is a composite of colours – Rainbow is a composite of stimulus. The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.’

‘Ok,’ I say, ‘thanks for the super helpful explanation. If anyone ever asks me, I’ll be sure to explain it in exactly the same superior and condescending way.’

We both laugh, but I know Hugh will feel a little chided. He hates to think of himself as condescending or pompous. Doesn’t ever stop him from being either, though. I think, today, Hugh is mostly suffering from an inability to decide which proverbial hat he should be wearing. Back in the plush, soft-furnished reception lobby we shared a fumbling handshake, and trod an awkward line somewhere between the easy familiarity of firm friends and the stiff formality of new business acquaintances, neither of us knowing which role to adopt on an occasion that called for both. Months and months of initially gentle, subsequently insistent, and finally forceful probing on my part had eventually worn a gap in the great barrier that Hugh had erected between his professional and personal lives. Through this gap, had been delivered an invitation to Rainbow HQ in a most unlikely form.

You see, I happen to be what Rainbow like to call divergent. Which Hugh is actually just about to explain,

‘Out-of-the-box, the basics of Rainbow work on almost everybody. We’ve got enough data built up over the years to predict ordinary responses to a decent array of subliminal inputs, and we can weave those responses into fairly complex target emotions and desires increasingly well. Obviously, that efficacy is growing all the time – the more testing we do, the bigger the sample size, and the greater our accuracy of predictions.

‘But not everyone responds in a way we can anticipate…’

I feel like I’m walking through a commercial of some kind, or some piece of corporate promo. Hugh talks like he’s reading from a script, as though he’s not just talking to me, but making things clear for the benefit of a third party somewhere. He’s rehearsed this, in the privacy of his own head, and now, together we’re acting out the play he’s constructed in advance. I “hmmm” interestedly, reach out and drag my fingertips along the smooth, painted brick wall to my right as we walk. It’s a pleasant, grounding effect, calms me down. The very slight, but constant downward pitch of this corridor makes me nervous.

‘Some people will always be outliers, and it’s a big job to track them down and work with them to try and eradicate the holes in our systems, the gaps in our coverage, you might say. There are obvious cases, of course – the neurodivergent, for starters, although often, their responses can be categorised following a bit of data collection and actually end up easier to predict. Common divergences fall into a ready-built taxonomy, and have already been studied for well over a century at this point, so in a way, a lot of the work is already done. We know how they’re likely to respond.

‘The less obvious candidates – such as yourself, for instance, might take a little more… exposure.’

A short silence follows, as we both know what he’s talking about. Rainbow’s chequered ethical conduct history includes several hotly-debated first-hand accounts of divergent R&D sessions, reportedly resulting in psychological ill-effects ranging from moderate confusion to full-on PTSD. Subjects bombarded with the full subliminal Rainbow arsenal in increasingly invasive attempts to provoke the desired responses. Reports of nightmarish hallucinations, phantom sensations, feelings of impending doom, nameless, shrieking terror. All in the name, of course, of enabling a corporation to manipulate your emotions to their own, largely financial gain.

Who in their right mind would volunteer for such an ordeal?

‘I have to say, after all the scaremongering in the subtle press of late, we do usually have to heavily incentivise our subjects – ‘

‘ – you mean I could’ve gotten a payday out of this?’ I cut in, and we both laugh, lightly.

‘You know you could’ve – and still could, to be honest. It’s usually quite… generous.’

‘Not required, in this case. Thanks anyway.’

He holds open another gate for me, again as if I didn’t know it was there. I put out my hand and take it from him. It’s smooth, enamelled steel – if blue is the even matte of Wedgewood, then this is an institutional, pale, mint green. It clangs deafeningly behind me, echoing off the hard walls and cold concrete floor. I jump – I can’t tell whether Hugh notices.

‘Well, the offer is there, in any case. If you need any additional persuasion, we do have a budget for it.’

I get the feeling it’d make him more comfortable if I were to accept. Maybe his conscience is troubling him – or maybe to a person like Hugh, financial recompense is the only kind there is. Not for the first time, I wonder whether he hasn’t worked out my true motivation for being here. Can he really not have made the connection between my seeking him out, twenty-something years after our time together at uni, and his appointment at Rainbow? Is the real, human-to-human world so unknown to him, after so much time spent in tech? I suppose it doesn’t actually matter, given that I am actually finally here, going under the psychological knife, running the gauntlet of sanity in the name of increased market penetration for a company I don’t even work for. Market penetration for a company intent not on making the world a better place, not on easing suffering or increasing quality of life, but on selling direct manipulation of our thoughts and desires to the highest bidder. A high watermark for intrusive marketing – wasn’t so long ago we recoiled in horror at the algorithms churning away in the background static of our electronic devices. Those moments when it seemed they’d been recording our conversations to sell us things we’d been talking about – if Rainbow have their way, they’ll start the conversation for us, then sell us whatever they told us to want. They won’t have to wait to find out what we want, they’ll make us want it for them. I wonder, after today’s “exposure,” will anything I want, anything I think, actually be of my own creation?

Thinking about it is making me nervous in fact, and I stuff my left hand into the pocket of my slacks, put my right out again to touch the wall, and quell the tremor in them both. I’m wearing slacks instead of jeans, in what could well be thought of as “smart attire.” I wouldn’t know – but it’s important to some people that you look correct for the occasion. Hugh, I do happen to know, is one of those people. If putting on some smart trousers, a shirt and some proper shoes lessens the chances of Rainbow turning me away from the testing suite door after all this effort, then that’s what I’ll happily wear. Walking along in silence, I’m vaguely aware that my toes are slightly sore.

‘The new shoes, maybe?’ Hugh suggests, out of nowhere.

For a second, I’m flabbergasted – and then I recognise it as a punt, and one he must float all the time. Wonder what his success rate is.

‘Very clever. How often does that one work for you, then?’

He laughs,

‘Almost every time, believe it or not. The timing is key, obviously – once you’ve sown the seed by proposing the original question, it tends to re-surface whenever the subject gets a moment’s quiet to think. With a bit of practice, I can take a pretty good guess at when it’s going to come back for an encore. Plus, I think everybody’s feet are a little sore, most of the time – and you tend to frown a little when you notice it.’

I curse my transparency.

‘Plus, you noticed I’m actually wearing new shoes today.’

He laughs again.

‘Guilty. Call it a tailwind.’

‘Analogue Rainbow effect, eh?’

I wonder if the whole condescending explanation involving the sore toes was in fact the laying of a trap, designed when Hugh noticed my stiff, unbroken-in leather oxfords in place of my usual heavily-worn trainers. Had I not been wearing them, would I have been given some other working example – the headache question, perhaps? Would I have frowned at the appropriate time for Hugh to run his clever trick on me?

‘I wonder if it’s the same for the headache thing.’ I say.

‘The headache thing?’

Come on Hugh – it’s another obvious one. He must just want to hear me say it.

‘You know – the thing where you ask healthy people how their headache is. You take a bunch of healthy people – that being, people who aren’t currently under the weather or whatever, people who wouldn’t have any reason to be suffering a headache at all. So you take them, one at a time like, into a comfortable room, and you strap on the brainwave measuring cap good and tight.’

I know, of course, that Rainbow don’t use anything as archaic as a “brainwave measuring cap.” Their fMRI scanning is done contact-free, using some focussed-beam tech that goes way over my head, in fact probably way over the heads of anyone not currently working in tech for Rainbow. It just might pay me in some way to play down the depth of my private research on what goes on inside these impenetrable walls.

‘Then you ask a series of unimportant, non-challenging questions. When the subject is completely at ease, you ask “So, how’s your headache?” In response, they subconsciously scan themselves for a headache, and part of the scanning is to recall exactly what a headache feels like. They conjure up a facsimile of a headache, and then compare it to their current state for reference. So on the micro scale, your subject actually experiences a tiny, fleeting headache. When you ask the question, you provoke a response, and one the subject can’t consciously control or resist.

‘I just wondered if they frowned a little when they felt it.’

‘Hmm, I wonder. Have to try it, sometime.’ Hugh says thoughtfully.

‘Let me know how you get on.’ I say, and wonder if he will. Or if I’ll be in any fit state to receive the information after today’s adventure. Wonder whether Hugh had a similar little repartee with Graham Hodges, the most notorious of Rainbow’s guinea pigs. Wonder if he frowned a little. Before I can stop myself, I blurt out,

‘Did Graham Hodges frown a little, when you tried the sore toes trick on him?’

Hugh’ clacking footsteps miss a beat, and I curse my impulsiveness. Idiotic, to play smart and provoke him, this close to the finish line. I do wonder though…

It was Reddit, evergreen font of knowledge, that gave me the full scoop on Graham Hodges. I’ll paraphrase;

Graham had tested as divergent in one of Rainbow’s first online screening campaigns, and after a little back-and-forth, had agreed to an immersive testing session at their HQ. This was early days, and no-one was really concerned about the consequences of interfering with your own perceptions in exchange for a few quid, so the incentive package, as Hugh might (and probably did) call it, was modest. Enough to pay a few month’s bills on the house he shared with his wife and their young daughter, maybe clear the sheet on an “emergency-use-only” credit card – the type of money a wealthy person would dismiss out of hand, but a working person might find life-changing. Not enough, in short, but like generations of work-a-day parents before him who lined up to test experimental medicines in exchange for a middleweight cheque, Graham signed on the line – difference being, they’d known the risks, and he, of course didn’t.

Graham’s session had been narrow in it’s focus – someone at Rainbow had dreamed up a possible use for their gumbo of subliminal stimulation, in the form of a pocket-held device that an estate or letting agent could carry with them into a property, and use to manipulate potential buyers or tenants into falling in love with the place. Noble idea that it was, the technology was years away from such portability, and though they had a handle on some basic things, complex concepts or thoughts like “what a lovely room” or “isn’t the light in here just perfect?” were still beyond them.

Step forward Graham Hodges. Rainbow leant hard, over the course of about eight hours, on Graham’s perceptions of spaciousness. They wanted him to feel free, light and airy in response to the idea of an enclosed space, instead of trapped, breathless and panicked.

For most of the session, Graham’s subjective experience was one of random sensations – staccato knocking noises, unpleasant vibrations. Vague nausea, cause unknown. Here and there, when Rainbow tuned the stimulation back below his level of consciousness, he felt nothing. Graham left the confines of the testing suite feeling nothing but a little smugness, at being paid to sit in a chair for eight hours (I imagine).

The side-effects began on his way out of Rainbow HQ. A sense of unease tugged at him as he made his way outside, a nameless little fear which manifested itself as a desire to get home as soon as possible. Just tired he thought to himself (probably). When he got home, the fear abated, and he found himself feeling better about the cramped starter home the family of three lived in than he had done the day before. In fact, better than he had since the day they’d moved in, when it had just been him and Julia, starting out together. Graham went to bed that night with a warm glow of well-being, happy at what he thought might just be a pleasant side-effect of his time at Rainbow. Long may it continue, might well have been his last thought as he fell asleep.

Over the following weeks, Graham’s behaviour began to change – where he’d always been keen to be out at work, knocking things about on a construction site, he now wanted nothing more than to be tucked up at home. In fact, he now rushed home, where previously he’d have stopped off at the gym, or the pub. He felt nervous, vulnerable in the open spaces of the outside world, free and relaxed in the snug surroundings of the little house. Again, it could be viewed as a positive thing. More time with the family.

The problems started when one morning he couldn’t bring himself to leave the house. He stood in the doorway and felt the oppression of the open air, felt the inexplicable restriction of it and just could not do it. It snowballed from there. Graham lost his job, and began to behave increasingly oddly – he moved into the smallest room in the house, the “box room” as they called it, and would only come out to use the bathroom. He wrapped himself in layers of warm clothes, and insisted the heating be kept on at all times. Any coolness, any freshness to the air reminded him of the now-dreaded outdoors. He lay alone, sweating beneath the winter duvet in the single bed he’d evicted his daughter from, curtains shut tight against the brightness of day, and thought back to his life before, to memories of rock climbing in his youth, mountain biking or surfing. He wrestled with his memories, tried to imagine how such things had brought him joy, tried to conjure it up and experience it again, second-hand. But when he relived them in his head, walked through them like little multi-sensory movies, instead of exhilaration, he could feel only panic and fright. How could it be possible to hate your own happy memories?

Somewhere amidst the confusion, Julia began to seek help, raising the alarm however and wherever she could. Rainbow’s non-disclosure agreement, signed by Graham, didn’t apply to her, and nor would it have stopped her in any case. Her appeals online were picked up far and wide, and by dint of her sheer determination, she managed to enlist the help of several curious, pro-bono therapists. In turn, they all came to perch on the edge of the single bed, and to psychologically prod and poke at poor Graham. No amount of work could seem to undo the change that had been made in Graham’s preferences, it was eventually agreed. For the rest of his life, he would seek enclosed spaces, and avoid open ones. The lever that finally pried him from his claustrophobic bolt-hole, was eventually found in the oddest of places. During a hypnosis session, Graham relived an experience he’d had years before of explorative scuba-diving – which he’d hated at the time. He’d found the murky confusion of the sea bed frightening, and the feeling of pressure suffocating. But in his new, switched-around state, the combination was so alluring to him, that in time Julia and her team of eager voyeur/helpers were able to use it to coax Graham back into the world.

Anxiety-filled trips out of the house to go diving soon followed. Julia and Graham together researched locations notorious for murky, low visibility, submerged obstructions and suchlike. Valium was sometimes required for the return journeys. On the whole, however, Graham’s situation began to improve. It seemed he could get his fill of the sensations of confinement during his dives, and that this would sustain him for a few days at a time. He moved out of the box room, and back into the marital bed. There was even talk of a new career as a search and recovery diver.

“No-one really knows what went wrong with Graham Hodges.” Hugh says, breaking my train of thought.

I want to say, “Well, we do know that he descended thirty metres into the murky Firth of Clyde, crawled into a sunken trawler and sat there until his air ran out – we do know that, don’t we?”

We walk on, in silence, only the click-clack of our smart shoes on the concrete, and the gentle swoosh of the clothes on our bodies as we walk to keep us company. The air grows stale – stale and warm, unhealthily warm. It gives the illusion that we’re walking into a subterranean roadway somewhere, a motor tunnel – an abandoned one at that however, no carbon in the air, no pollution. Just the stagnant artificiality of a man-made, underground structure. It bothers my nose and throat.

I’m tempted, once a suitable period of silence has passed, to play Hugh at his own game, and take a wild guess at when his little ghost headache might show up; ‘Dehydration, perhaps?’ But it doesn’t feel right – it feels like the time for joking and friendliness is behind us now, like we’re sinking beneath it with every step, further into the realm of seriousness and formality. Further into the zone of real-world consequences.

He holds another gate open for me, and as I take it from him and step through, I wonder with a whiff of paranoia, whether there might be some kind of alarm fixed on the gates. If he has to touch the gate first, if I were to touch it, an alarm might go off. The subject-escaped-supervision alarm, the divergent-on-the-loose alarm. Rainbow henchmen springing forth from nowhere, rifles raised.

Ridiculous. No-one here carries a rifle, I’m sure.

Suddenly, Hugh takes something out of a pocket and beeps it at a receiver somewhere – with a luxurious hush, doors retract on our right.

‘The R&D suite.’ Hugh announces, and we step inside. The doors hush again, and bump gently together behind us. To me, the hush-bump seems almost like the click of a trap sprung – this is as far as we’re going. It’s cool in here – sharp in it’s contrast to the stale warmth of the corridor outside. The air is fresh, air-conditioned and comfortable. It tempers the nagging artificial feel of the whole place a little.

Hugh takes me by the elbow, and shows me to a chair. It’s a business-like, thinly-padded affair, but upholstered in smooth nappa leather, it’s instantly comfortable. He puts a glass of water into my right hand, and like an afterthought says,

‘Water?’

It’s ice cold, and it tumbles and cascades into the parched interior of my mouth when I sip it. It’s heavenly – I hadn’t realised how dry my mouth was. Nerves are kicking in now, and I take a deep draft of the water, feel it all the way down to my restless belly. I swivel a little in the chair, and thrum the fingers of my left hand on the leather armrest. Rest the half-empty glass on my right knee.

Hugh sits in a chair to my left, and swivels to face me.

‘You’ve heard, of course, the many allegations levelled at us here at Rainbow – allegations regarding difficult experiences in R&D sessions and the like? Persistent side-effects?’

I keep thrumming on the armrest. Hugh clears his throat,

‘They’re fairly widely-publicised…’

I thrum through a few seconds silence, and then stop abruptly.

‘This is where you tell me that it’s all true?’

Hugh recovers almost instantly, and hides his surprise behind a compliment.

‘You’re very perceptive.’

Janice Aldridge, the early test subject for a Rainbow dating application who to this day sees a broad, open smile on the face of everyone she meets, and fervently believes them to be in love with her. Makes a fool of herself constantly – a born erotomaniac, if you ask Rainbow. Peta Hallesen, who can’t perceive melody anymore, hears music as a bundle of disconnected and incoherent noises. Can’t even tell when the phone is ringing – acquired musical agnosia, official story. Sean Liddel, who injures himself regularly because he can’t tell where he ends, and the outside world begins. Countless others, traumatised in obscure ways, changed subtly or dramatically.

Graham Hodges, dead, caught in the trap of his distorted perceptions.

All true. I did of course already know this, but hearing Hugh confirm it makes it all the more concrete. Am I in some way better than any of them, somehow more robust? Likely just more foolhardy – still willing, impatient even, to run the risk, in the face of all their miseries.

The condensation from the glass is starting to soak my knee – I lift the glass, and Hugh takes it out of my hand, puts it down somewhere. He sighs,

‘We need to know, before this begins, why you want to go through with it – why you want, so badly, to be here. I know you’ve always had an amateur interest in the field, I know you’re keen, but this… this is something more serious. If it’s a case of wanting to be at the vanguard of a new, emergent technology, of wanting to further the field of research, then that’s laudable, however… I fear you might not be fully cognizant of the reality of the experience itself. We are going to bombard you with subliminal and non-subliminal stimulus, trying to provoke every kind of response. It’s unlikely to be entirely pleasant.’

‘I’m aware of that.’ I say. I’m also very aware that this is the moment when the whole thing either gets called off, or given the go-ahead.

‘If you’re aware of that, then pardon me but why the hell do you want to go through it?’

I’ve been holding my breath, and I let it out, long and low.

‘There were other experiments I heard about, back at the dawn of Rainbow’s research. Back at the time of the little headaches, so to speak. All kinds of basic stuff – asking the subject what their favourite perfume smelled like, or what song reminded them of their youth. Watching in real time, you could see the corresponding part of their brains light up with activity – the olfactory cortex come to life as the subject manufactured a little sample of the perfume and fed it into their conscious mind for reference. Likewise, the auditory cortex churning out some nostalgic tune for them to experience internally. Rainbow recorded the reactions, then reverse engineered them, so you could provoke them at will. And subjects were told to picture a beautiful sunset.’

‘Ah.’ says Hugh, and I can hear him catch on.

‘I know you do things differently now – I know the inputs are highly sophisticated, I know a lot of it isn’t perceptible on a conscious level. You play the notes, and we hear the tune, so to speak. If you want us to imagine a certain scent, you won’t ask – you’ll make it happen, without us ever knowing you did.

‘I can tell you now, sitting here in this nice chair, what a beautiful sunset looks like. I can describe the gently darkening sky, the glorious warmth of light as the day dies, smeared across the horizon. The burning face of the sun blushing until it’s almost soft enough for you to look directly into – bleeding, blooming reds and oranges seeming to swell and flow, breaking into darkness. I can describe the colours intimately – I’ve memorised it all, I know every detail of a beautiful sunset.’

Hugh is quiet a moment.

‘You think we can make you see?’

This is it – the moment he decides to turf me out or not.

‘I think it’s possible.’

‘You know…’ Hugh sighs, and starts again, ‘You know it won’t work like that, don’t you? You know your visual cortex won’t suddenly spring into life and feed you the image of a beautiful sunset?’

‘Maybe not –‘

‘There’s no maybe about it, I’m afraid – that won’t happen, and you need to recognise that before you go through with this. I’m telling you as a friend now,’ and Hugh lays a hand on my knee, lowers his voice, ‘this isn’t going to be pleasant.’

He’s right, I think – what comes next won’t be very nice, at least not entirely, not objectively. But he’s thinking of me as someone who’s lived their entire life in the dark, which sighted people often do. What he hasn’t grasped, can’t grasp, is that I don’t know what the dark is. Like everything else in the sighted world, I can know the dark only vicariously, only through the descriptions handed to me by others who take such things for granted, as they must.

After a moment’s silence, Hugh presses lightly on my knee, and then he lets go.

‘I need you to say you’re ready.’

‘I’m ready.’ I say quickly, and then feel a flush of what might be regret, might be triumph.

As Hugh stands up to leave, the bundles of words that describe a beautiful sunset stand up in my mind, and I can tell some irrational, emotional part of me is trying to prime my mind with them, hoping to filter whatever qualia might arise out of my virgin visual cortex, hoping it will be supple, malleable enough to bend and reshape into something beautiful. But is there any point, if all beauty is subjective?

After all, what difference is there to a blind man, between a flaming sunset and a Dark Tower?