A Ghost for a Clue

by C L R Draeco

  Despite that NDA we’d signed, this supernatural circus was getting out of hand. I raked a hand across my scalp. “Any chance they’ve all got a vow of silence?”

  Torula’s iHub rang, and Roy’s eyes grew wide. “Yo, tell me that’s not the Vatican.”

  She smirked as she picked up the call. “Hello?” She listened for a moment then glanced at Roy. “Yes, he’s here.” Her eyes opened wide. “Who did she say she was?” She fixed a disbelieving look at Roy. “What else did she say?”

  Now what? I narrowed my eyes at Roy, wondering if he’d asked his ex-wife over for a ghost of a time.

  “No, it’s all right,” Torula said into the receiver. “I’ll let him know. Thank you.”

  She turned to Roy with a puzzled tilt of her head. “Someone called the office at Schwarzwald looking for you. Good thing the person who answered didn’t know about you and only found out you’re with me after she’d put the phone down.”

  “Why is that a good thing?” Roy asked.

  “It was a reporter from an online magazine called THEORY.”

  “Bloody hell, Roy. A reporter?” I clamped a hand over my temples, fearing the worst already.

  Roy jerked back. “Hey, I didn’t say anythin’ to anybody!”

  “Oh really?” Torula said. “Well, she wanted to confirm if the Green Manor was into studying animal souls. Any idea who might have given them—”

  “Hell, I just gave my name to the farm owner and nothin’ else. I said I was an amateur inventor, caught the horse, and left. I didn’t say anythin’ about the Manor. I swear!”

  “Do you think someone could’ve followed you here?” Torula asked.

  “I drove to my place before I came ’ere. It was dead o’ night. The streets were empty. If anyone was followin’, I’m sure I woulda noticed.”

  “The car you used . . .” I said, thinking of one telltale marker. “Was it the one with the Green Manor sticker on the windshield?”

  Roy’s mouth fell open. “Jesus H. Yeah.”

  “Oh no.” Torula glanced with dismay at the camera. “I have to tell Mr. D. and talk with the people at Schwarzwald in case that reporter calls again.”

  “What’ll you have them say?” I asked.

  She turned to leave. “I have absolutely no idea.”

  42

  I Can’t Make It Work

  Roy and I accompanied Torula out of the nursery but parted ways with her just a short distance out, enough to get away from the microphones and cameras. I paused along a stone path, next to a tall hedge.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you, Roy? You know we’re keeping the willdisc under wraps. Then you bring it here, and worse—you leaked it to a reporter!”

  “I didn’t mean to.” Roy raised his shoulders in a tense shrug. “I needed to check if the willdisc works, that’s all.”

  “Why are you so obsessed about this? Are you trying to get your ex back or something?”

  “Why the fuck would I wanna do that?”

  “Then give me one goddamned reason why you would—” Suddenly, the thought of another possibility jolted me. “Jesus. Don’t tell me you’re thinking of selling ghosts on Amazon.”

  “No . . . I’m not.” Sober in a heartbeat, he rubbed the top of his head glumly and ambled off the path.

  I paused and gave him space; this was more serious than I’d thought.

  “I need to put my dog to sleep . . .” Roy winced and pinched the space between his eyes.

  “Oh man.”

  “Boner’s got some infection, and the doctor says he’s too damn old. Not strong enough to fight it.”

  His back to me, I laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.” I couldn’t think of any other words to say that would make it hurt any less.

  “I can’t just let Boner go.” He turned to face me but avoided eye contact, his arms crossed tightly as though he were cold. “So I made a modified Faraday cage big enough for ’im and put the iCube together, but it had a lotta issues until your idea of a vortex in a willdisc solved all o’ that. Then I used the horse to check if it can work on animals, and now I know. It can.”

  “It can what?”

  “Do what I need it to.” He sniffed and rubbed his nose but kept his eyes averted.

  A tight knot formed in my gut. “What exactly are you planning to do?”

  “Kill my dog. So I can save ’im.”

  “Jesus Christ.” The afternoon air suddenly grew cold around me. “I mean, Jesus Christ, Roy!”

  “I’m out of options, man. My best friend’s dyin’, and I’m tryin’ to save ’im. But I don’t know what I’m doin’ wrong. I can’t make it work.”

  “I don’t understand. Make what work?”

  “I caught a horse’s hyperwill, right? But I did somethin’ else. I asked my vet, Quince, to put a real sick dog in the Faraday cage and let ’er die there in ’er sleep. But I didn’t get any stream o’ data to form anythin’.”

  Bloody hell. Roy was actually planning to make a ghost? I swabbed a hand over my mouth. “Listen, I know you want to keep him around. But it’s his time, mate. It’s just how life was programmed to go.”

  “Didn’t you see all those cars in my garage? I told you there’s no sense buryin’ ’em in the past since we’ve figured out how to take ’em into the future. Well, I got a chance to do it for my closest friend. So I’m doin’ it. I’m savin’ his soul.”

  “No. You’ve always known my stance on this. A hyperwill isn’t alive. It’s a fossilized memory stream of some kind. It’s a data transmission, not a soul.”

  Roy shook his head repeatedly, refusing to listen— to me and probably even to his own conscience telling him it was madness. “I just wanna make sure that when I put Boner down, he’ll head straight into a willdisc and not go into the light. I know I said I wasn’t gonna ask, but . . . will you help me?”

  I could barely swallow as a lump of dread constricted my throat. “Roy, even if it works—and I doubt it will—but even if we do manage to capture any data, it won’t be any different from me keeping my parents’ memorabilia inside a robot or getting posthumous phone calls from VN.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m gonna go through with it whether you help me or not. I got no choice but to put ’im down—but I’ll be damned if I just sit around and let ’im down.”

  43

  Helping A Friend

  A full moon hung low in the sky, like a bad omen telling me I had to stop whatever was about to happen.

  Afraid of any lurking reporters, I’d peeled off the Green Manor sticker from my windshield and drove up and down Roy’s street, scanning the parked cars and checking out the early evening joggers. But it was all an act of procrastination before pulling over to face my challenge of the night: To help a friend accept the death of his pet.

  Silence greeted me as I walked into Roy’s garage. The day had just ended, and the smell of hard work still hung in the air. A small section at one discreet corner at the far end had been cleared, and the modified Faraday cage Roy had built for Boner sat there like its centerpiece. It looked like a miniature of the 3D chamber at the Green Manor with about the same dimensions as an oversized office table. The clear glass bore a tinge of gray with metal foil taped along its seams. A small camera on a tripod stood a short distance away.

  “I’m callin’ it a Motown.” Roy’s voice cut through the silence. “’Cause it’s more than just a Faraday cage now. It’s gonna be the only place where a decent dawg can get some soul.”

  Though it sounded like a joke, I didn’t laugh. There was no trace of humor on Roy’s taut face.

  “I got a really fine mesh in there, fully integrated into a transparent mu-metal foil, incorporated to block the entry and escape o’ EM waves. So at the moment o’ death, the Motown would protect Boner’s soul from any electromagnetic interference and keep ’is sinusoidal signal from escapin’.” Roy muttered it all like a professor rattling off a lecture he didn’t have time for.

  I glanced around
the spacious garage. “Where’s Boner?”

  “Over at the vet. He’s really in bad shape. Practically just forcin’ him to hang on.” Roy ushered me into his office: A cramped and cluttered area with just enough room for a table, a chair, one cabinet and a little bit of air. I squeezed myself in and checked out the data displayed on the computer.

  “That’s what we got from the poodle that died in ’er sleep in the Motown. Whaddaya think?”

  I frowned at the near absence of data. “What’s there to think? There’s hardly any signal here to speak of.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about. You once told Benedict that not everythin’ that dies generates a soul. Boner’s gotten really weak, so I need you to figure how to fix the setup.”

  “Well . . .” I cracked my neck as I prepared to dash a man’s hopes. “I really don’t see how it —”

  Roy’s iHub rang, and he dashed out as he answered it.

  “. . . could work,” I finished lamely, staring at a now-empty doorway.

  I slumped onto the chair’s backrest, lost on what to do. Roy had already done so much, but he had kept it all secret because he knew how things usually went. Share a crazy plan and people will try to stop you. I knew that well enough.

  But sometimes, stopping someone was the right thing to do.

  Suddenly, Roy was back at the doorway, panic in his eyes.

  “Boner’s had a seizure. I gotta get ’im here before it’s too late.” He handed me a willdisc case. “I’ve already put one together. All it needs is the plasma injection. Can you finish it for me, man?”

  I took the small case from him. “Yeah, no worries.” What am I saying?

  “I need you to promise me . . .” Roy trembled as he spoke. “. . . you’ll figure this out. You’re gonna make it work, right?”

  “Hey, I . . .” I balked and shook my head. “That’s not something I can promise.”

  “Dammit, man. Just think about it! It’s what you do better than anybody.”

  “But I . . .” What else was there to do? Argue? The dog was dying. Roy was desperate. And I was . . . right there. “Okay, I’ll think about it.”

  Running on autopilot, I dug out my sketchpad—my trusty security blanket in times of trouble. I flipped through the pages and found the equations I’d used for the simulation—this set of assumptions that had allowed me to predict how a sine wave could lead to an energy transfer at the point of death.

  Roy must have adapted the calculations to the energy levels his vet had told him a dog could produce. But that sick poodle had died without producing a hyperwill—so maybe the electrical impulses were simply too weak.

  How the hell do you boost neural signals in a dying dog?

  I glanced at Boner’s empty wicker basket. But why even do it? We should just let the old guy go in peace.

  A sense of gloom pulsed inside me as I stood, unable to move, in Roy’s deserted garage. There was no way I could give him a definitive answer on how to do it. The closest I could get would be a guess.

  My iHub beeped, and I hoped it was Roy saying we were too late. But no. It was Torula.

  “Eldritch just called,” she said. “We have an emergency meeting tomorrow morning, and he’s requiring all of us to come—including Starr.”

  “What’s it about? The willdisc?”

  “He didn’t say. But the latest thing that’s happened was that leak to a reporter. So please tell Roy to come. If the topic’s related to him, he needs to be there.”

  “Sure, no worries.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll see you—”

  “Wait, hang on a bit. Could I ask you about that idea your mother had? About hormone modulation and how it affects electrogenesis. Could it help boost neural signals?”

  “What’s this for?”

  Roy needs to kill his pet. I grimaced. “It’s for the willdisc. Roy needs to . . . know.” Please don’t ask why.

  “Why?”

  I grimaced even more. “I think it has something to do with . . . uhm . . . this thing . . .”

  “The iCube?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about it?”

  “Er, it’s got something to do with how it manages to . . . save a soul, I suppose?”

  “I see. But boosting neural signals isn’t something we could use when it comes to Thomas anymore. Are you asking about the medium’s neural signals then?”

  “No, Roy’s more like . . . curious about how the hyperwill came to be. Something about what happened at the point of death, I guess?”

  “Oh! It’s great timing then. My moribund spider plant, Charlotte? She has tons of data to share on that.”

  “But that’s a plant.”

  “Right.” She sighed. “You’re talking about electrogenesis in humans.”

  I gritted my teeth. Mammals would be more accurate.

  “I’m afraid I can’t answer that,” she said. “But I’m sure Tromino can. I’ll send you his number.”

  In mere seconds, I had her brother’s number in my iHub.

  Tromino. The one person in Torula’s life who intimidated me. And here I was, about to consult with him on how to catch a dog’s ghost. But Torula was right—an endocrinologist would give me a better chance at getting a clue.

  Sketchpad in hand, I wandered over to the screened-off section in the garage where the equipment was. I sat on a stool and fiddled with my wristband as I stared at Boner’s empty dog basket.

  How do I ask Tromino about this? Fat chance my cover of working on a video game would help here.

  I huffed out a breath, tapped on my iHub, and made the call. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, I dove in.

  “I’m working on this project for NASA. It’s a life support system for the Mars mission, designed to deploy automatically.”

  “Interesting,” Tromino said.

  The specs of Project Husserl rolled smoothly off of my tongue. “But if automation breaks down, we need a backup system the astronauts can trigger even when they’re incapacitated. We’ve considered voice activation, but it’s limiting. I’ve also sent a proposal exploring thought control.”

  “Even more interesting.”

  “But the big downside is—it would require the astronauts to constantly wear headgear to capture the impulses. Not very comfortable.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Okay. It’s now or never. I clenched my fist until my knuckles cracked. “I was wondering if you could give me an insight on designing a sensor that could detect naturally-occurring signals from a distance. Like bioelectrical impulses—electromagnetic signals produced by the body which we can boost when death is inevitable.” Don’t say “huh.” Don’t say “uhm.”

  “And the experts at NASA couldn’t come up with an answer?”

  “Uhm . . .” Bugger. “I thought it better to ask the best endocrinologist I know.”

  “I’m the only endocrinologist you know.”

  “That’s why . . . you’re the best.” I facepalmed and winced.

  Tromino chuckled. “Well, much as I would want to be part of the glory, I don’t think designing equipment for Mars is up my al—”

  “Something like a sine-wave generator.” I got up and paced. “Over at NASA, we have a three-phase sine-wave generator circuit. It’s used in studies of the propagation of traveling waves in plasmas. I’m looking for something like it in the human body.”

  “A three-phase what?”

  “Sine-wave generator circuit. It’s used to power the plasma equipment, combined with three high-voltage transformers and three power-amplifier channels.”

  “Why the sets of threes?”

  “It’s what works.”

  “NASA, huh.” Tromino said the acronym like it was amusing.

  That was an odd response. “What about NASA?”

  “I heard a lot of its top guys are with Deltoton. Have you heard of it?”

  “Of course.” I hope he’s for it. “Are you a member?”

  “Only recently, yes. But
don’t tell the wife. She thinks it’s pagan.”

  I laughed. “I get that too, sometimes.”

  “Ah, a kindred soul.”

  With that casual revelation of common ground, conversation became easy. The talk rambled on around Deltoton and then, out of nowhere, Tromino said, “Try the HPA axis.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s the closest thing I can think of—to mimic your sine wave contraption.”

  “What is it?” I flipped my iHub screen open and typed a quick search for the HPA axis. I landed on a chart of the human body, showing a couple of teardrop-shaped glands and a kidney highlighted in color.

  “The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis,” Tromino said. “It’s the crucial team in the neuroendocrine system that controls the body’s overall response to stress.”

  I pressed Record on my iHub. “How is it activated?”

  “It’s a complex cocktail and sequence of events. Though I doubt it would come into play if the astronauts are unconscious. They would have to be under duress. Glucocorticoids rise activating the hypothalamus. Then you have the corticotropin-releasing hormone triggering the pituitary to release ACTH . . .”

  I let Tromino ramble on, with more than half his words unintelligible to me. All Jacksons seemed to talk the same way.

  “Cortisol might have a lot to do with it too,” he said. “In other words, you need the right combination of hormones in conjunction with a highly agitated human heart. One cardiomyocyte can pack a powerful electrostatic punch, enabling the heart to generate the body’s most powerful, rhythmic EM field.”

  “That’s how I get my sine wave pulse?” I asked.

  “Maybe. And both NASA and Deltoton would be happy. It’s a set of three.”

  I finished the willdisc. Just as I was storing it in its case, Roy came trudging into the garage with his dog in his arms. Boner’s eyes were open by a crack, his tongue poking out of his gaping mouth with every labored breath. Roy looked like a tired and punished man with a face stripped of all memory of joy.