The Doorkeeper's Mind

by E. L. Morrow

  The first seven interviews are promising, but no standouts. Each applicant possesses vital skills, but each one also has a gap, making them less than ideal. Any of them can learn the missing areas, but the time needed will delay production.

  One candidate remains. Marie reviews the details again.

  C. Vandermeer. No gender checked. It’s not required—probably female. Electronics is one of the last holdouts as primarily a man’s world. Twenty-eight-years-of-age … high qualifications. Meets everything we are looking for … perfect … almost too good to be true.

  Marie requests the final candidate. Then this happens.

  2094-12-17, 4:30 pm EST

  Preparing to walk around her desk and greet the visitor, Marie notices something in the paperwork she had overlooked. While reading that item the candidate enters, and Marie experiences a new sensation.

  My body is suddenly cold, like stepping into a deep freeze. I have goosebumps. Except all over my scalp there are hot spots, like the prickling during DK Activation, but smaller and they jump around.

  Marie looks up to see a young woman who could pass for 22 years of age, standing just inside the nearly closed door. Both her hands are covering her mouth, and she seems to be frozen in place, unable to move.

  The candidate speaks first, hands still covering her mouth, “I’m sorry, I really must go.” She starts to turn back to the door.

  “No! Please stay. I mean you no harm!” These words take her by surprise long enough for Marie to move toward her, past her, and close the office door behind her. I dare not touch her. I don’t know what might happen if we make contact.

  “I’m afraid I’m not the person for this job,” says C. Vandermeer.

  “We’ll talk about the job in a minute. For now, please tell me what you experienced.”

  “You’d think me crazy.”

  “I doubt that.” She is afraid of me. She doesn’t know if I can be trusted. I can read her emotions; she seems unaware. But she reads thoughts. She had stopped probing me, but now is starting again. She’s frightened.

  “Let me try something,” says Marie. “Suppose I suggest some things about some possible experiences and you tell me if I’m right or not. Okay?”

  “I guess.”

  “For several years, probably starting just before puberty you started experiencing times when you somehow knew what other people were thinking. Am I right?”

  “Go on.”

  The two women are now seated in chairs, facing each other but not close enough to touch.

  “I suspect this often gets in the way. Sometimes you get lots of people’s thoughts all jumbled up together. It won’t leave you alone. When you are trying to read or listen to music or hear what the lecturer is saying, others thoughts interrupt your concentration. Maybe the guy who wants to get in your pants, or someone else’s; the person trying to cheat off your work, or the ones with violent thoughts. Am I warm?”

  “How do you know all this? Are you …?”

  “The words you didn’t say were ‘… like me?’ Yes, I can interpret the thoughts of others, but only learned it recently. Other things disturbed my equilibrium while growing up.”

  “I don’t know what to say. You’ve caught me. I can’t understand how. What happens to me now?”

  “You are still having trouble trusting me. What can I do to let you know that your story is safe with me?”

  “You’re not going to turn me over to the authorities?”

  “What authorities?”

  “The ones who … hunt people … like me?”

  “I think you are remembering something that is very painful. Will you tell me?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You told someone, and they betrayed you. That’s what I’m sensing in your thoughts.” Marie slides to the edge of her chair; close enough to touch C, but she does not. Instead, she lifts her fingers and motions for her to look directly at Marie’s face. Then she says. “I … will … never … betray you!” They look into each other’s eyes for 30 seconds. C’s eyes fill with tears. She turns away and sobs uncontrollably for several minutes. Marie gives her tissues, and says, “I would hug you, but I’m not sure that would help.”

  After a while, C. Vandermeer says between sobs, “You … don’t know … how long I’ve … searched for someone … I could talk to.”

  She wipes her face and gains her composure adding, “I can’t even talk to my boyfriend. There are only a few people’s thoughts I can’t hear. He’s one of them.”

  Marie gets a picture of this man, and an alarm bell sounded in her head. I know that person. He’s trouble. I must be careful. I don’t want to spook her.

  “What does ‘C.’ stand for?”

  “Charli.”

  “May I call you Charli?”

  “Yes.”

  “Charli, I need to go to my desk and pick up my communicator. I want to show you a picture and see if you know this person. Okay?”

  Marie retrieves the device and returns to her chair. Following the indictments, Senator Bluefoot’s home was raided. While he and some of his cronies escaped, they had little time to hide evidence. Data recovered includes files on various operatives, who presumably now work for The General. Marie keeps a file of those people on her PCD in case they are stalking her.

  Finding the image of the person she had picked up from Charli, Marie shows her the picture, “Do you recognize this person?”

  “Yes, that’s my boyfriend. How did you get his picture?”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Gabe Jeffers. Tell me how you got his picture.”

  Marie tells her about the arrests and the file. She doesn’t want to believe it, but there is no reason to doubt me. She is trying to probe my thoughts again.

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Lunch. Sandwich shop in the next block. He’s going to meet me after the interview. He’s the one who told me about this job. I work as a library assistant. You must be wrong about him. He’s been nothing but nice.”

  First, follow Charli’s energy trail, back to lunch. There he is – switch to Jeffers, follow him forward. He calls a co-conspirator. There are people at her home in case she gets by him. He stopped to pick up a device. It’s a weapon. He is now in the lobby. Oh, he’s after me as well as her.

  Marie says, “Charli, I have a security team that protects me. I also use an Automated Personal Assistant who does a lot for me. Don’t be alarmed. I am going to talk to my PA, and ask my security chief to come in.”

  “Why?”

  “There may be a threat, better safe than sorry. Friend, would you ask Danzella to come in using the private entrance?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Friend, Watchlist number 263. Is he in the lobby?”

  Danzella arrives, and the PA says, “He is in the lobby, and has a satchel containing a round device covered in a ceramic material to thwart standard scans. The device contains an explosive charge … a remote detonator is attached to his right wrist by a cord.”

  It only takes a minute of explanation until WEEL’s Security Chief takes charge. With the two women sequestered in the back of the office, Danzella contacts her team, other staff, and Toronto Security.

  Judith Barns leaves her office with a communicator in her hand. She walks toward Jeffers saying, “Mr. Jeffers you have a call.” In the instant, before he realizes it might be a set-up, he leans forward preparing to rise from his seat. The hesitation is all the two guards behind him need. Danzella grabs his right wrist adeptly severing the cord and removing the detonator; the other moves the satchel well out of reach. Jeffers makes a valiant effort and breaks free, intending to take Judith as a hostage. However, the stunner in her other hand has him writhing on the floor before he can touch her.

  Over the next two days, Marie and Charli get to know each other. Charli is offered and accepts the job. Since her home is a crime scene, she stays with Marie in her apartment a
t WEEL headquarters.

  In addition to Jeffers, Security arrested two assassins waiting for Charli, plus three in the bomb shop. They also confiscated 17 partially completed explosive devices. All those arrested are in the database of thugs found at Bluefoot’s.

  Everything Marie had suggested about Charli’s earlier life turns out to be true. When she was 14, Charli’s mother died. She lived with her grandparents in Winnipeg until college, and they reserve a room for her at all times.

  Her first flashes of hearing someone else’s thought started when she was 11 years old. Mostly they occurred when the people were angry. Later they began popping up when people were scared.

  She told her mother who said, “Don’t dwell on it. Try to occupy your mind with something else—like a complex math problem, or an intricate puzzle. But whatever you do—never tell anyone but your grandparents or me. Others won’t understand.”

  Charli says, “It was looking for intricate, complex problems to distract me that lead me to electronics.”

  By the age of sixteen, she was being bombarded by others’ thoughts. She found respite in electronics labs. It helped because there were fewer people, and they were focused on similar problems; if their thoughts broke into hers, they either helped or were easily dismissed.

  Her grandparents told her “… there are others like you, but we’re not in contact with them so we don’t know who you can trust. Some who are like you are dangerous and will try to make you do cruel things, so be careful who you trust.”

  Charli ended up as a library assistant because her electronics job had involved designing targeting systems for handheld smart weapons. As a pacifist, she could not support such outcomes. Some of the establishment blackballed her from obtaining employment with non-defense organizations.

  The incident that Charli remembered, causing her paralyzing fear, was at age 22, having shared her secret with a counselor.

  Charli said, “Even after weekly sessions for three years it took all my courage to tell her my secret. When the time came for my next appointment I learned that Rita, my counselor, had been transferred—no explanation was given. I felt abandoned, without a word from her. Then I remembered that I had moved a year before to a different apartment. Maybe she sent something to my old address.

  “I went to where I used to live. Perhaps an explanation had been sent by delivery. When I arrived, the apartment had Security Tape over the door. I asked a neighbor, and she said, ‘everyone inside died of asphyxiation. They speculate a gas leak, of some sort.’

  “I knew in that instant that they had been murdered, but I was the intended victim. I had to get away. From then on, I’ve lived in fear of being discovered. That’s when I started using C. Vandermeer rather than Charli.”

  Marie extends her Toronto stay by two days, to work with Charli on techniques for turning off the thought perception. Instead of returning to Wichita on December 23nd she flies to Seattle to spend Christmas with Allison and friends.

  The break from the routine is welcome. Christmas Eve and day are spent relaxing, catching up and consuming the usual unhealthy but delicious holiday foods.

  Marie stays in her old room at Cyclops. Allison guarantees there “… will always be a place for you.” For safety reasons, no one at Cyclops may have a significant relationship—parent, child, mate or lover—unless that person also works at the Institute. That prevents enemies from taking a relative to use as leverage against the researcher. The only exception—Allison Ward’s relationship to Marie.

  Only seven other people at the research center know the full extent of Marie’s connection to their chief. To everyone else, Marie is introduced as Allison’s Goddaughter.

  For two days following Christmas, Marie is subjected to a variety of cognitive test and challenges while hooked to functional brain scanning equipment. The results will provide a baseline for her functionality. Dr. Jeffery Cle, an endocrinologist, and Dr. Sandy Euan, a neuroscientist, had devised a battery of tests to study Marie’s unique talents.

  During one test sequence, Marie intentionally reads energy trails. Other times she is reading data from WEEL or talking on the communicator to Lexie. Each of these gives the research practical differences. Allison is fascinated with the initial interpretations.

  Interesting. Mother thinks my brain has functional centers that do not exist in most people. She is not telling me this, because she believes it will upset me. Actually, I’m relieved. There’s a physiological reason for some of my different experiences—they are normal for me because my brain is wired that way. I won’t press her. She’ll tell me when she’s ready. The scientist in her must process before she’s ready to talk.

  Thirty

  The V Club

  2095-01-04, 2:00 am GMT

  The first Tuesday of each month, at two am Greenwich Mean Time, the “V-Club” meets by communicator. The V is the Roman numeral for five. The members know each other only by an initial. “J” is the senior member. The others are “L,” “N,” “P,” and “R” in order of their seniority. Each replacement for a departing member is assigned the next letter in the alphabet.

  The call is initiated by a computer somewhere in one of the Scandinavian countries. Multiple levels of protection ensure complete privacy. However, on this occasion one of the “encrypting code setters” experiences a glitch for a few nanoseconds—not long enough to alarm any other code setting devices. Just long enough for one Chatter-Searching-Computer to slip in undetected. The following conversation is recorded.

  “J” (Female voice).

  “L” (Male, medium range).

  “N” (Male, deep voice).

  “P” (Male, younger).

  “R” (Female, lower range).

  J, “We’re all here. What do we know about ‘The Girl?’”

  P, “My people can’t find much past on her. Only what is public. We’re still digging.”

  L, “She had no close friends in school. No one she keeps in contact from school or family. Lots of security around her now. That would be expected. The pro group wants to use her popularity, sending her speaking all over. I suspect they will eventually get sloppy, and then we can get at her.”

  J, “She is providing a valuable distraction from what we are doing.”

  N, “Agreed, but if enough people listen to her, it could threaten our ultimate goal.”

  P, “We’ll deal with it if it happens.”

  R, “Do you think she is one of those?”

  J, “The General sure thinks so. He’s put killing her on top of his list.”

  L, “We think most of the specials are gone. The raids caused them to scatter. Without their support system, no new ones were born after about 2060. We’ve rounded up most of the others. We haven’t had a call about a ‘special’ for about five years.”

  J, “She could be a natural or accident. But if we’ve learned anything from following the Invincible types it’s that they need a lot of guidance as teens, or they simply go crazy and self-destruct.”

  N, “Should our position on The General change?”

  J, “I can’t see why we would change it. He, like the girl, provides a distraction away from our work. He’s too crazy to trust. If he succeeds in returning us to the age of confusion, it wouldn’t be bad for us.”

  N, “I bring it up because, with Bluefoot, Cotton, and Glandmore in the wind, we might need The General to manage them.”

  L, “My sources say that the last two are working for The General, but the first has evaporated into thin air.”

  R, “So are we agreed that we keep The General at arm’s length, we don’t throw in with him, but we won’t stop him?”

  There are sounds of affirmation and J says, “Confirmed, no change on The General. But do we let him kill the girl, or stop it?”

  L, “It seems like she’s doing well enough on her own.”

  P, “To stop The General would be to tacitly throw in with her and the pro-plan group. In the
long run, that’s bad for us.”

  R, “Not necessarily. Right now, she is unwittingly helping our cause. For that matter, the pro-plan group is not rattling us either. If they win, we can continue as we are. A loss could be more problematic.

  P, “I disagree. If the Planners lose, there’s dissatisfaction to channel toward our cause.”

  R, “But without the stability of the plan, we can’t control who ends up in charge. If it’s The General, we’ve got trouble. Bluefoot or one of the Invincibles the issues and egos are different—but manageable.”

  J, “All true. I think we need to decide: do we kill the girl, leave her be, or throw in with her side to protect her. Are we ready to vote?”

  L, “Before we do, what do we know about Fields?”

  P, “I assume you mean C. F. Fields?”

  L, “Correct.”

  P, “She seems to have disappeared. Not a trace since she left Baltimore.”

  J, “To my mind Fields is the greater threat. Whoever she is; appears, and disappears seemingly at will. She’s off the grid, and that includes the security grid. When she is untraceable, she is collecting information and feeding it to the girl.”

  R, “Correct. There is no way a new graduate of door services could have known everything she knew in just eight days.”

  P, “Burnbalm, the guy we sent to find her in Baltimore, is convinced that the girl and C. F. is the same person. But we know the girl was in school, on campus for at least three years while Fields was traveling.”

  N, “Wait a minute. I didn’t think we knew about the girl until that Monday night when she blew the jerks away.”

  J, “Correct. But then we did a background sweep. She was either a very dedicated student, or a very dumb one. She never left campus, except holidays and not all of those.”

  N, “So, shouldn’t we be looking for Fields.”

  P, “We are. But you can’t find a vapor.”

  J, “Back to the question. Are we ready to vote about the girl? The one the General has his sights on?”

  No one objects.

  J, “All in favor of killing her now…” One yea is heard.