by Drew Cordell
“I can’t even imagine a third subdivision. I’m exhausted from two.”
“Well, I didn’t even expect you to make subdivisions that were more than ten percent separate. Your compartments were at least ninety percent independent from one another which is truly incredible for your first time breaking your mind into more than one piece. Controlling your subconscious and using it with your conscious mind is one thing, but separating them from one another and using them independently is much more challenging. Let’s go again. This time I want you to hide the box with your subconscious and seek it with your conscious mind.”
Mr. Barton put the neuro pads back on my head and readied his tablet. “When you’re ready, Jake.”
I focused and took control of my subconscious mind and tried to pull it apart from my conscious mind. It was more difficult, and I struggled to keep active thoughts from my conscious mind from leaking in. The barrier was not as strong, but I still had control over my subconscious mind while my conscious mind sat inactive and unaware of what I was doing with the part of me protected with the barrier. Something shifted in my head and a sensation of falling washed over me.
It was different this time. The building was darker and something felt off. There was a dull buzzing sound, low and ominous that seemed to grow louder as I progressed through the rooms. I knew where I was going because it was the same building I had created in the previous exercise. The rooms were messier now, most of them destroyed and littered with broken furniture and concrete. The windows in some of the rooms were pitch black, and dense black fog leaked in and fell to the floor in swirling pools from the cracks in the glass.
My movements were becoming more sluggish, and a feeling of dread was growing inside of me. I didn’t want to be here. When I tried to break the barrier, I felt it resist my efforts, trapping me inside. Reluctantly, I continued through the rooms holding the box in my hands, the key to escape, as Mr. Barton called it. Deep cramps formed in my legs, slowing me further. Most of the rooms I went through were now empty; there was nowhere to hide my box. I continued through, growing wearier. I heard a giggle echo through the rooms, and it was impossible to tell where it came from. The buzzing sound was growing louder, and the light in the rooms was being pulled in strange looking streams into the black fog that lingered on the edges of the walls.
The walls were turning from gray to a crimson red. Blood red. It kept getting darker as I progressed farther into the building of emptiness. I tried to move faster, to get away from the maze of frightening rooms. Deciding I wanted no part of this any longer, I turned around, but the room I had just come from was now consumed by the void-like black fog. I had no intention of finding out whether the fog could hurt me. Having no other options, I trudged forward through the maze, through one more room.
As I cleared the door in front of me, I was suddenly in the Slums. I saw my parents across the street standing and looking at me. They started walking toward me with warm smiles. I turned my head and screamed when I saw a large construction truck barreling down the street and swerving wildly, the truck I knew all too well. There was nothing I could do other than try to change the past.
I screamed at them. I tried to run, but my rubber legs were faltering. My parents showed no signs of fear; it was as if they couldn't hear my screaming. They continued walking toward me, stepping down from the curb, waving and smiling as the truck closed in. The box in my arms was getting heavier, pulling my arms down and holding me back. I tried to drop it but couldn’t, it seemed to be glued to me. I continued to scream, then watched with disbelief as my parents disintegrated in front of me as the truck struck them and flung them into the distant shadows. Their bodies flew through the air like rag dolls, mangled and broken. They were swallowed whole by the thick walls of black fog that were locking me inside the projection.
The black fog from the walls was creeping forward along the streets now; it was getting closer. I could hear it, a great rumbling sound, and saw it approaching with speed. The walls that bound my projection were caving in. The buildings that were touched by the fog began to crumble and turned to dust on contact. I started to run away from the approaching fog, but could no longer move. The fog swept over my legs and I screamed. It climbed and consumed my body, and everything faded to a deep nothingness.
8 ESCAPE
∆∆∆
I became aware of the fact that I was sitting on a cushioned chair. It didn’t feel like I had been sleeping, it just seemed like I had been out of focus—daydreaming almost. The disturbing thing was I couldn’t remember where I was, or how I got there. I was sitting in a long hallway with many rooms on either side. The laminate tile floor was well cleaned, and the air smelled of strong disinfectants. It looked like a hospital, but there was no one in the hallway. Only a few of the old fluorescent lights were lit, giving the entire scene a sinister look. The hall didn’t look complete, as if details were missing. It was close enough to what I remembered to make me think it was a real hospital and believe I was actually here, but there were small inconsistencies that made me despise the place of lies, the projection of my mind. The best way to describe the anomalies was that they were glitches in my vision; like something hadn’t materialized properly. Some objects were blurry in appearance, while others were crystal clear. A few shadows cast from the lights also weren’t correct. I noticed my cast was missing as well.
The numbers on the empty room doorways were there, but the patient clipboards were blurry, and I was unable to read the names on them. It was as if someone had smeared the marker boards with an alcohol-soaked rag.
I was surprised to find my legs worked efficiently and remembered how they had felt when I was trying to run from the black fog that consumed me. Something was off, though—my legs moved how I told them to, but I couldn’t feel them like before. I turned around and saw the hallway wasn’t complete; at a certain point, the same black fog from earlier was hiding whatever was on the other side. I was still trapped. How long had I been here?
“Hello!” I cried out, trying to wake myself from the horrible dream-like trance I was stuck in.
The words had no feeling even though I was using my diaphragm. What had gone wrong? Why couldn’t I break out of my thoughts and return to the real world? Was I even still awake? Still alive? I realized I had to be awake, as my thoughts were still coherent. I was still in control of my mind, but the lack of feeling anything physical was very concerning. I couldn’t feel the air being pulled into my lungs, couldn’t feel what my hands were touching; all I could do was see, hear, and smell. What was this strange place?
The hands on my watch weren’t moving. I unscrewed the crown of the watch and wound it. I returned the crown to the set position and saw that it still wasn’t working. The clock on the wall was also frozen. This was a place without time. There was no way to tell how long every second of time I spent here transferred to the world I knew.
Shrugging off the disturbing thoughts of losing a significant amount of time in reality while trapped in my mind, I decided to try to find the way out or cause a collision. Unlike the previous exercise I had done, I wasn’t aware of any other copies of myself in this strange place. I continued forward down the hallway toward a single door at the end. I hadn't realized how quiet it actually was here. There was no noise other than the light contact of my shoes on the tile of the hall. Even the lights that flickered overhead were silent. All the rooms along the length of the hallway didn’t have any doors and were filled with the void. The light from the hallway didn’t seem to illuminate a single inch of the room; it was simply destroyed on contact.
I walked forward until I could read the sign on the only door in the hallway: Wesley Ashton. Hesitating, I grabbed the steel handle and almost yelled in surprise when an icy shock cascaded through my wrist. Gritting my teeth, I turned the knob and slowly pushed the door. After it was open, I could no longer feel anything; the cold that had shot through my arm was replaced with a lack of any particular temperature. I was in the hos
pital room where my father had been taken after the accident. It was the same hospital room where I had watched him die. As the door fully opened, I could see I was already in the room, sitting close and watching my father—except it wasn’t actually me.
The best way to describe it was that I was an outsider looking in on a moment in time with perfect clarity. Neither the version of me sitting with my father nor my father himself looked up to watch me as I walked in.
“Jake … you have to get out of the Slums. There’s no life worth living down here.” He started coughing, wiping away a streak of blood with his shirt. “If any of us can make it out, it’s you. I need you to be strong,” he said.
Younger Jake was in tears, nodding as one only can when they know they are about to lose the last of their family. He was holding his father’s hand loosely, aware of how cold it felt, how close to death his father really was. His mother had been killed at the scene, yet he somehow clung to the idea that his father was going to make it; he just had to. He realized in that moment his childhood was over and things would forever change.
“I’ve left you our savings so you can start your life and have somewhere to live. You’re old enough to start working.”
Younger Jake nodded, tears cascading down his face. I continued to watch the scene from the doorway, only realizing I was crying when my vision blurred. I was trapped in a memory of pain and sorrow.
Just as I remembered, a doctor came in and told me I had to leave the room for a little while. As soon as younger Jake left, the doctor walked up to my father. He whispered something I couldn’t hear, so I slowly walked closer, hoping they wouldn’t realize I was there.
“I’m going to give you something else for the pain so you can spend more time with your son.” The doctor prepared a solution in a syringe and added it to the IV bag that hung over my father. Mr. Barton walked into the room slowly and made his way over to my dad. I had no memory of my dad ever knowing or seeing Mr. Barton. After the doctor gave my father the medicine, he nodded at Mr. Barton and walked back out of the room, fading into a black mist and disintegrating from the scene.
“Wesley, I’m so sorry this happened.”
My father looked at him and said something I couldn’t make out. Deciding to risk it, I crept closer to the bed to get to where I could hear.
“I need you to watch over my son and when the time is right, I need you to take him into the Guild.”
“You know I will. If he’s anything like you, he will make an excellent Archivist.”
Archivist? Was this guild working for the Government to establish Absolute Knowledge? I stopped myself from letting a stream of questions surge through my brain. I was never here, this couldn’t be a memory because I wasn’t in the room. It was some sort of dream, some irrational chain of thoughts deep within my subconscious. It had to be another illusion my mind was creating to trap me. I needed to escape.
I saw a door on the other side of the room where an LED exit sign hung visibly over the frame. Had the door been there the whole time? I couldn’t tell. I looked back into the hallway I had come from and was surprised to see the black fog had crept up to the threshold of the room I was standing in. I stepped forward and closed the door, hopefully shielding myself from the fog that had already consumed me once. It seemed like my mind was passively pushing me forward through the world my mind had created. What terrified me was the fact that I didn’t know if it was pushing me deeper into increasingly complex layers of thoughts and behind deeper barriers of entrapment, or if I was subconsciously trying to free myself from the prison I had created.
Mr. Barton was already gone from the scene; he must have disappeared when I closed the door. My father was now asleep. I crept forward toward the exit door, trying to be as quiet as possible. Just as I cleared the bed, my father’s hand lashed out and grabbed my wrist. I felt a shock leech the heat from my arm again, but it was much deeper this time. The cold threatened to freeze my bones. I tried to scream out, but the cold was filling my lungs now. He looked at me with terrible lifeless eyes devoid of all color. His skin had turned a sickly blue, and he looked like he had been dead and frozen for days. Thick purple veins bulged from his papery blue skin on the hand that constricted my wrist like a vise grip.
“You shouldn’t be here!” he screamed in a ghastly voice with no fragment of recognition. His eyes looked past me, perhaps even through me.
I tried to pry my hand away but felt the cold continue to flood through my body. Dark purple marks were spreading on my arm where the skeletal hand grasped with impossible strength. I felt myself shivering, unable to break free of the frozen grip.
“You’re not real,” I murmured, attempting to suppress my hysteria.
“Hah,” the terrible voice said in a gritty tone. “There’s an interesting thought.” The cold, lifeless eyes continued to look through me. “You know of treasonous things. You will be killed and erased just like your mother and me.”
My thoughts froze in my mind; I was unable to control my body.
“You will join us soon enough,” the thing before me said. It was in rapid decay; the frozen, fetid skin of my father fell off in thick sheets revealing a smoldering, black skeleton below. I screamed like I never have before, fear shackling my body, freezing it in place. I felt like I was on the brink of hysteria, like my brain was about to split.
A flash of darkness covered my vision, and I felt the ground shift below me. I was standing just past my father and saw he was still sleeping in the bed and still alive. I looked at my arm and saw the dark purple marks were gone and once again I felt nothing. While I had felt the greatest cold of my life seconds ago, I once again had no sense of temperature or feeling. I moved as quickly as possible to the door and yanked the handle, walking into a room of light. A flood of whiteness washed over me, and a great booming sound rung in my ears as the ground began to shake.
A second later I was back in Edgar’s flat, lying on the couch. I could feel my heart pounding rapidly in my chest. I could feel the breath entering and leaving my body. I could feel my movements as I made them and was fairly confident I had returned to the physical world. A sliver of panic jolted through me as I thought about the possibility of becoming trapped in a deeper layer of my own mind.
I quickly shook the thought out of my head and looked at my surroundings. The lighting was exactly correct, there was no black fog made entirely out of nothing, and I once again felt like my normal self. With the light the way it was in the Slums, I had no idea how long I had been gone from a state of physical consciousness. My watch said 9:15; there was no way to tell if it was morning or evening, but at least it worked. The fact that it was still running meant I had been unconscious for less than two days. I knew it lasted for a little under forty-eight hours with a full wind. I searched desperately for any inconsistencies that would tell me I’d slipped deeper into my mind, but there were none.
Edgar walked over and saw I was awake. “You’re back,” he said without expression. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, Jake.”
9 NANOTECH
∆∆∆
I was struggling to keep my composure, the horror of what I had seen was sending electricity through my veins. My body felt cold and clammy despite being wrapped up in a blanket. Edgar was sitting in front of me, observing me carefully as if he wasn’t sure I was sane. I reached up and wiped a thin layer of sweat from my head and continued to look around the room. At least I felt something. The lack of feeling when trapped in my mind had been terrifying.
“Don’t talk until you’re ready. You are all right, you are safe.”
I managed a nod and sat still for several minutes—though they felt like hours—taking care to keep my breathing steady and trying to recollect myself and gain mental composure.
“I’m okay now,” I said. Edgar carefully removed the neuro-connectors from my head.
“Tell me what you saw, Jake. I need to get an idea of what happened.”
I told him a detailed account of
everything I had experienced. The simple act of retelling it to Edgar brought back the emotional pain and fear I felt when trapped. When I got to the part about him talking with my father, I studied his face carefully to see if there was any indication of surprise. There wasn’t. I fought through the story, pausing at moments when I thought I would break down again.
“Hmm. It sounds like you had at least five subdivisions of your mind, maybe six or seven. Your session data is off the charts.”
I shook my head. “There was only one version of me from the start.”
“I think you created multiple subdivisions and your mind wasn’t ready for it. When you created too many for your mind to handle, your brain created one more barrier and trapped your active mind under it so you would perceive only one use of your brain. I can’t explain what you saw, nor what it means. I do know you must have been trapped very deep to lose the ability to feel. I am not sure if you were having collisions or just created an incredibly strong barrier in which you subconsciously forced yourself to unlock to bring yourself out of the projection gently.”
“Did you know my father?” I blurted.
“No, I didn’t know your father, Jake. I only know what you’ve told me about him—which isn’t much.”
“Sorry,” I murmured.
“What’s good is that you had the ability to think rationally. Projections such as what you experienced can harm the mind, and things that are illusions can be perceived as truth and memory if the layering is strong enough.”