by Greg Isle
The eastern gate, whispered a voice in my head. Jerusalem.
Never had I experienced a vision while awake. I opened my eyes and saw Rachel staring at the dashboard. I closed my eyes again, but the city vanished like the afterimage of a flashbulb.
"David? What's wrong with your eyes?"
"Nothing."
I rubbed my temples and tried to open my mind to whatever was coming. I'd felt drawn to specific places before. During my twenties, I'd traveled a lot, and while I was usually driven by student wanderlust, there were times when something deeper had pulled me off my planned track.
While visiting Oxford University, I'd awakened one morning with a feeling that I needed to get to Stonehenge—not just to see it, but to be in the presence of the sarsen stones. My companion assured me that there was no rush; the stones had been standing for five thousand years and would surely wait another few days. But still I rented a car and drove south until I reached Salisbury Plain. After darkness fell, I approached the ancient ring alone and did what tourists can do no longer: walked among the stones in the moonlight and lay upon the sacrificial altar. I was no New Age dilettante, but a medical student from the University of Virginia, looking toward a stable career. Yet this wasn't the only time such a thing had happened. I was drawn to Chichen Itza the same way. And on a drive to the Grand Canyon, I changed course and camped at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico for a week instead. In Greece it was Delphi over Athens. In all these situations I had felt an external pull, as though something were calling me to a specific place.
What I felt now was different, an internal compulsion to travel to Jerusalem, whatever the consequences. That the city was sacred to three great religions was irrelevant. I had nothing in common with the faithful millions planning pilgrimages to the Holy Land. I sensed only that the city held answers for me, answers that could be found nowhere else.
"Where are we going?" Rachel asked irritably.
"Israel," I said.
"What?"
"Jerusalem."
"David—"
"It's because—"
"Don't tell me. Because of your hallucinations, right?"
"Yes."
She reached out and lifted my chin, then looked deeply into my eyes. "David, people are trying to kill us. The government is trying to kill us. You've been having hallucinations for reasons we don't understand, but which may have been caused by damage to your brain. And you want to use those hallucinations to guide you in trying to save our lives?"
"Whoever will save his life shall lose it."
"What?"
I turned up my palms. "I'm not saying this will save our lives. I'm saying that if I'm going to be hunted down and killed, I'd rather it happen while I'm trying to learn the meaning of something I believe has meaning."
"You truly believe your hallucinations have meaning?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I can't explain it logically. It's just something I know. Like a bird flying south."
She sighed like an exhausted mother talking to a child. "Try, okay? Try to explain."
I closed my eyes and searched for words to explain the inexplicable. "I feel as though I've been chosen."
"For what?"
"I'm not sure."
"Chosen by whom?"
"God."
"God God?"
"Yes."
She took a deep breath and folded her hands in her lap. She was clearly struggling to remain calm. "I think it's time you told me what these recent hallucinations have been about. Are you still dreaming that you're Jesus?"
"Yes."
"What's different about these visions as compared to the older ones? Why have you hidden them from me?"
We'd finally arrived at the line between sanity and the rubber room. I was glad we were in a truck on a highway and not in Rachel's office. There was no one she could call to have me committed. "Because I no longer believe they're hallucinations. Or dreams. I think they're memories."
She expelled air in a frustrated rush. "Memories? My God, David. What's happening in these dreams?"
"I'm reliving parts of Jesus' life. His travels to Jerusalem. His experiences there. I hear voices. My own . . . the disciples. Rachel, what I see in my head is more real than what I see around me. And events are moving rapidly. I'm approaching the crucifixion."
She was shaking her head in disbelief. "How could you have two-thousand-year-old memories that only entered your mind in the past six months?"
"I don't know."
"These dreams make you feel some urgency to get to Israel?"
I hadn't thought of my feeling as urgency before, but that was what it was. What I'd perceived as generalized anxiety was really a slowly developing compulsion to travel to the setting of my dreams.
"To the Holy Land," I said. "Yes."
"Are you afraid you'll die in real life if you don't get there before you dream of the crucifixion?"
"Maybe. Mainly I have a sense that if I don't get there soon, I'll lose the chance to understand what my dreams are trying to tell me."
Rachel stared at the oncoming traffic, her head rocking back and forth. Then she suddenly turned to me, her eyes bright and wide.
"Do you realize what day it is?"
"No."
"We're less than a week away from the Easter holiday."
I blinked. "So?"
"We're approaching the traditional dates of Jesus' death and resurrection. Not only in your dreams, but also in the real world."
"You're saying the two are connected?"
"Of course. Somehow, the approach of Easter is causing you to have these dreams, this anxiety. You're like the people who thought the world would end when the millennium turned. Don't you see? This is all part of a delusional system."
I shook my head and smiled. "You're wrong. But you're right about the dates. They could be important."
Rachel was watching me as she would someone who was playing an elaborate joke on her. "What about meeting the president?"
"We'll do it when we get back. What difference does a couple of days make? Especially if it keeps us alive?"
She closed her eyes and spoke softly. "Did you tell Andrew Fielding about your hallucinations?"
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
"He told me to pay attention to them. Fielding always said that in trying to build Trinity, we were walking in the footprints of God. He didn't know how right he was."
"Perfect. Two peas in a pod." Rachel put her hands on the wheel as though to pull onto the road, but she left the truck in park. "You really intend to follow these hallucinations to Israel?"
"Yes."
"And you admit they might be the result of brain damage?"
"Not brain damage, as you think of it." I thought of Fielding's excitement as he expounded his theory of consciousness. "Disturbances to the quantum processes in my brain."
Rachel was squeezing the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles were white. "You're like someone who dreamed he was once a pharaoh deciding to go to Egypt to find the meaning of his life!"
"I suppose I am. I know how crazy it sounds. The thing is, we don't have a better alternative. If it makes you feel better, we're going because we need to do something the Trinity computer can't possibly predict."
"It can't predict you'd go to Israel?"
"No. It was my Super-MRI scan that caused my dreams to start. My neuromodel has no memory of dreams that occurred after that. There's not even any mention of Jerusalem in your medical records, because I stopped going to you before the city took center stage in my dreams."
Rachel looked thoughtful. "Going to Israel isn't like going to Paris, you know. The country's in a permanent state of war. I've been there. They pay close attention to who goes in and out. El Al has four times the security of other airlines. And we're being hunted by the American government. As soon as we tried to book a ticket, they'd be waiting for us at the airport."
"You're right. We need fake passports."
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She laughed bitterly. "You say that like 'We need to pick up some bread and milk on the way home.'"
"I have eighteen thousand dollars left. There has to be a way to get fake passports with that."
"Fake passports won't cut it in Israel. Those people deal with terrorists every day."
"Being jailed in Israel is better than being murdered here."
Rachel leaned back in her seat and sighed. "You've got a point."
"I'm going to New York. With eighteen grand, I can find a fake passport there. I know it."
"What about me?"
"You can go. You can not go. It's up to you."
She nodded as though she'd expected this. "I see. What will happen to me if I don't?"
I thought about Geli Bauer. "You want me to lie to you?"
Rachel put the truck in gear and pulled onto the northbound on-ramp, accelerating fast.
"New York?" I asked.
"No."
"Where, then?"
She looked at me, her face less guarded than I'd ever seen it. "Do you want me to come with you or not?"
I did. More than that, I felt she was supposed to go with me. "I want you with me, Rachel. For a lot of reasons."
She laughed dryly. "That's good, because you couldn't make it without me. Passing out by yourself in the street isn't very healthy. If I'd left you back there in the truck, you'd be dead now."
"I know that. Are you coming?"
She passed a tanker truck and eased back into the right lane. "If you want to go to Israel, we have to go to Washington, D.C., first."
I stiffened in my seat. All my doubts about her had returned in a nauseating rush. "Why Washington?"
"Because I know someone there who can help us."
"Who?"
I wanted to probe her eyes for deception, but she kept them on the road. "I treated a lot of women when I practiced in New York. Mostly women, actually."
"And?"
"Some of them had problems with their husbands."
"And?"
"Sometimes the courts gave husbands access to their children despite evidence of physical abuse. Some of the wives were so afraid of what might happen that they felt they had no alternative but to run."
I felt a tingle in my palms. "You're talking about custody situations. Kidnapping your own children."
She nodded. "It's not difficult to hide from the police if you're alone. But with children it's tough. You have to enroll them in school, get medical care, things like that." She glanced at me, her face taut. "These women have a network. Sort of an underground railroad. That takes resources."
"New identities," I said.
"Yes. For a child, the foundation of a new identity is a birth certificate. For an adult, a social security card and a passport. I don't know many details, but I know that the people who help these women are in Washington."
"These women buy fake passports in Washington, D.C.?"
Rachel shook her head. "They're not fake. They're real."
"Real? What do you mean?"
She cut her eyes at me, reluctant to give up what she knew. "There's a woman who works in one of the passport offices in D.C. She had a problem with her husband years ago. She's sympathetic to the cause. I don't know who she is, but I know someone I can call. A former patient."
"The cause," I said. "This is still going on?"
"Yes. I sent a woman from Chapel Hill to them. A doctor's wife."
"Wow."
"There's only one serious problem I can see," Rachel said.
"What's that?"
"You're a man. I don't know if they'll do anything to help you."
Chapter 24
When the security door buzzed open this time, Geli knew it was Skow. She also knew it was bad news, because she hadn't been off the phone with him long, and the NSA man had sounded too exhausted to get out of bed. She spun her chair and saw him striding toward her, for the first time wearing something besides his Brooks Brothers suit. Today it was khakis and an MIT sweatshirt. Skow's eyes had dark bags under them, but he still looked more like a university administrator than an expert on information warfare.
"You look like shit," Geli told him.
"I feel worse."
"You wouldn't be here if this was good news."
"You're right. Ravi Nara called me as soon as you and I hung up." Skow flopped into the chair behind her. "Give me one of your cigarettes."
"You don't smoke."
"Oh, Geli, the things you don't know about me."
She shook a Gauloise from her pack, lit it, and passed it to him.
Skow took a deep drag and exhaled without coughing. "These are nasty."
"Where did Nara call from?"
Skow shook his head. "Everything in time. I want you to listen to me now."
She crossed her legs and waited.
"You and I have always held back a lot from each other. But now is the time to come clean. Or as clean as we can."
"I'm listening."
"Godin has always compartmentalized everything at Trinity, so I don't know what you know. You know we're working on artificial intelligence, but do you know exactly how?"
"Tell me."
"We're using advanced MRI technology to make molecular scans of the brain, then trying to load those scans into a revolutionary type of supercomputer."
"Go on."
"Our goal is to create artificial intelligence not by reverse-engineering the brain, but by digitally copying it. The result, if it works, is not a computer that works like a human brain, but a computer that for all practical purposes is a specific person's brain. You understand?"
Geli had thought the MRI scans were being used to study the brain's architecture, not as the actual basis of a machine, "The principle sounds fairly straightforward."
Skow gave a hollow laugh. "In theory, it is. And it will be accomplished, sooner or later. But the difference between sooner and later is critically important to you and me."
"Why?"
"Because Peter Godin is dying."
Something fluttered in her chest at this confirmation of an unacknowledged suspicion. Images of Godin flashed behind her eyes: facial swelling, his drooping mouth, his clumsy gait.
"Dying how?"
"Peter has a brain tumor. Ravi Nara discovered it six months ago, when the original scans for the neuromodels were made. That's why you haven't been able to contact Godin these past two days. When he's not working directly on Trinity, he's under treatment."
Geli shifted in her chair. "How close to death is he?"
"It's a matter of hours now. A day at most. The tumor was inoperable even at the early stage where Ravi found it. Peter thought if the government knew he had a terminal cancer, it wouldn't commit the resources necessary to make Trinity a reality. So he and Ravi made a deal. Ravi would keep the tumor secret and treat Peter with steroids to keep him functioning long enough to complete Trinity. I hate to think what Ravi asked for in return."
"Nara's a weasel."
"Agreed. The point is, there's been a hidden agenda at Trinity from the beginning. Peter Godin has been building Trinity to save his own life."
"What do you mean?"
"If the Trinity computer were to be completed before he died, Peter's neuromodel could be loaded into it. His body would die, but he would continue to exist in the computer as Peter Godin."
Geli blinked in disbelief. "There's no way in hell I believe that."
Skow laughed. "Not only is it possible, it's inevitable. It's just not going to happen this week."
"If that's true, then couldn't Godin's neuromodel or whatever be loaded into the computer after his death as well? Whenever Trinity is finished?"
"Of course. But in that scenario Peter would have to die without being certain it would happen. He'd have to die the way every other human being in history has. And he'd have to trust us to resurrect him in the machine."
"I see." She was trying to absorb the implications of Godin's imminent death. "So why exactly
are you here?"
Skow took another drag on the Gauloise and fixed her with a no-bullshit stare. "I'm here to save your ass. Right along with mine."
"I wasn't aware it needed saving."
"It does. Because Project Trinity is about to fail."
Now she understood. The ship was sinking, and the rats were looking for lifeboats. "But you said success is inevitable."
"Eventually, yes. But Godin's going to die before he can get the computer operational, and there's no one left who can take it to the next level. Fielding's dead. Ravi's already contributed what he can. The remaining work is out of his league. And if we fail to deliver a working Trinity computer after spending almost a billion dollars—"
"A billion?"
Skow looked impatient. "Geli, the Trinity prototype is built largely of carbon nanotubes. That's not just cutting-edge technology. We've had to create a whole new science. The expense of the materials R and D alone is staggering. Same for the holographic memory research. We—"
"Okay, I get it." Her brain was working in survival mode. "You said that when Godin's not under treatment, he's working on Trinity. Where is he working? Mountain View?"
Skow shook his head. "There's another Trinity research facility. I won't tell you where that is until we come to some agreement. But it was set up two years ago, right after we learned that the president was going to insist on having Tennant here for ethical oversight. Godin knew the day might come when he needed to work on Trinity without Tennant or the government knowing what he was doing. So he made it happen."
Her perception of the situation changed with each sentence. "So where does Trinity stand right now? A total write-off?"
"No. At this moment, we're partly operational. It was the Trinity prototype that predicted Tennant would run to Frozen Head. Tennant's neuromodel basically told us where he would be."
Geli could hardly believe this. "You saw this yourself?"
"No. But I've seen the prototype. And it's beyond imagination."
"That's where you got Frozen Head. Not from Dr. Weiss?"
"Right."
"My God. If it can do that, why do you consider it a failure?"
Skow held up a hand and tilted it back and forth. "Part of Trinity works. But it's only been working for twenty hours, and I can't even begin to explain the complexities of completing this machine. They're having success with the memory area, but the main processing areas are something else altogether."