13
The Training Begins
Ben escorted me into a training sphere that was located on the side of the main building. I stepped inside and discovered that it was totally white, as I turned around to look at the door I had entered, I heard a voice from above.
“You ready?”
“Yeah.” I replied even though I wasn’t.
Suddenly in front of me the wall began to move and a hatchway revealed a small room.
“Please enter and choose” the voice from above commanded.
Inside I was presented with a choice of weapons- an Uzi, a sniper rifle, a Cougar Magnum, or another handgun . I of course chose the sniper rifle because it was less clumsy and more precise. As soon as I wheeled outside the room the wall began to move again and the hatchway disappeared back into the white void. A voice from above instructed me to move towards a steel door and informed me that the task wouldn’t commence until I went through the door. I put my ear up against the door before pushing it open. I expected to emerge into another plain white room on the other side, instead I found myself outside in the middle of an airfield. I glanced around as a plane was taxiing towards me. I quickly leapt out of my chair to get out of the way, rolling into a ball as I hit the ground. I lay silently still looking around trying to grasp where I was and what my objectives would be. Then I heard shouting, I stood up using my chair to try and get a better view. There standing by the hangar was a group of people they appeared to be having some sort of disagreement as the shouting became louder and they started to shove each other. Suddenly one of the lights from a plane lit up my face and I was immediately spotted by one of the people.
“Who are you?” a member of the gang shouted in a husky foreign accent.
But before I was able to answer the question a machine gun started firing from a pillbox on the other side of the airfield. I immediately fired a series of bullets in random directions. Suddenly the gang simultaneously stopped firing at me. Looking around bewildered I realised that not only had the shooting stopped but everything else including the wind had come to a sudden halt. Then I realised that there had been a pause in the computer training program. The scene before me began to melt away and was replaced by the white void which engulfed me once more. It certainly was a strange experience being in a hologram.
“Well done, you were great!” said a voice over the speaker, I’m sure that I recognised it as Ben’s voice.
“What for?” I asked.
“You have just completed one of the levels in an incredible time! You should be very pleased with yourself. What training have you had?” Ben asked.
“What do you mean by training?”
“Have you ever had a go on this program before?”
“No, not really I’ve had a go on my mates BB gun a couple of times.” finally feeling pretty chuffed with myself.
Later on I decided to go back home with one of the staff from Ben’s Base in a green van, when I got in to my house about 3:30 pm. Mum told me off for not telling her where I was.
I turned my back on my mum and wheeled myself to the staircase and got out of my chair, straight up the stairs, in to my room, drew the curtains, went to bed. I tried to get to sleep but all I could hear were people being noisy across the street shouting. The rest of my weekend at home dragged on slowly with the monotony only broken by playing a game of cards and Monopoly.
By late Sunday afternoon I was totally fed up and craving some excitement so I went to the Folders Lane estate to try and visit Ben. As I got closer to the buildings I noticed that there didn’t appear to be any signs of life and there weren’t any cars in the car park. I thought that was suspicious, surely an organisation like this one would be on the alert 24.7. I let myself in by the side entrance, it was secured by a key code but luckily Ben had trusted me with the code. I pushed myself around the building expecting to bump into someone any minute. The building was deadly silent only for a hum of a large computer that dominated a room that I wandered into as I paced up one of the corridors. As I pushed myself along up to the screen I noticed that it had a picture of a Wolfar PPK hand gun. It seemed a bit inappropriate for a screen saver because this was a protection organisation. I continued to wander down the corridor feeling anxious. As I continued down the corridor deeper into the building I began to feel scared and then decided to bolt up towards the entrance and get out of there. When I began my journey back home from Folders Lane I began to feel relieved that I still wasn’t in that building all alone. I began to have a debate with myself on how sensible it was for me to have become embroiled with such an organisation; I mean I didn’t really know what they did in that building, maybe the best course of action was to tell someone what I have already witnessed. The best people to tell about my adventures were probably my parents. But my Dad was at Shoreham today washing his Piper Warrior plane and I am sure that my Mum wouldn’t believe me anyway. So instead of revealing all I just spent time in my bedroom watching TV.
The following morning I was due to return to C.H.I.S by mid-morning. Therefore I got out of bed at half eight, it gave me an hour to get ready to go back. I got myself ready in about fifteen minutes. Mum was due to take me home as my Dad was working, he was a pilot and would be away for the rest of the week. My mum used to work as an Air Hostess for Laker Airways before they went into liquidation. I jumped into my Mum’s Volvo 440 to begin the journey back to the slave driving therapists! My mum started up the car’s engine and we set off out of our drive
onto Barnside Avenue, into Kings Way, then down Folders Lane past Ditchling Pond into the winding road of Chailey, passing Chailey Common and finally up the curved slope to C.H.I.S.
I pushed myself into the main entrance, eager to catch up with my mates, when I quite literally bumped into one of the nurses.
“Hi Claire!”
“Hi Chris!”
“What have I done?” I thought to myself as I pushed myself past the office door.
Angie and Sarah walked in to the office giggling away, as though they had been on the
funny juice all last night. I looked back at Claire who was now frowning at me.
“Now then, where were you on Thursday night?” Claire demanded.
“Apparently Angie saw you and somebody else go over towards Westfield and then go into the abandoned house” She continued.
I just stared at her.
“That house is out of bounds, don’t you know that?”
Angie and Sarah had now come into the office and sat down.
“We were only over Westfield to see if there was any late post for us” I tried to explain.
She looked unconvinced, and said sternly “you know that place is out of bounds, if you get caught there again it’ll be more trouble than it’s worth.”
Monday dragged on with its usual excitement. My last appointment of the day was with Jenny, my private tutor. I was looking forward to today’s session; Jenny was bringing her copy of “ The River Riders” along with her today which was by the author T.C Bridges. It is a book about a boy who gets sent by his parents to this lumber yard as a punishment, but he ends up getting into all sorts of adventures chasing a pair of villains.