A Ghost for a Clue

by C L R Draeco

  My heart gave an anguished thud, and a soft sob escaped me. I didn’t even know I was crying.

  “Sweetheart, I’m here,” came Mom’s gentle voice along with a soothing touch.

  I wept harder at the sound of those words, knowing that’s how it would always be. They would risk it all for me, break every known code of laws—legal, biblical, medical—to save me. I can’t do this to them.

  “I want to go home.” I gasped for breath and clasped my mother’s hand. “Just . . . just let me go.”

  60

  A Dragon Of A Disease

  Night had fallen, and I made my way through quiet hospital corridors heading towards the ICU. Turning a corner, I found myself in a bridgeway lined with windows where moonlight streamed through. It was like walking on stepping stones of light as I made my way back to Torula, ready to slay her dragon of a disease, with a laptop bag slung over my shoulder as if it were the only weapon I would ever need.

  The fantasy of being her knight faded away as soon as I noticed a familiar figure, standing alone, head bowed, looking out a window.

  “Triana, is everything all right?”

  She turned slowly, as though afraid the very movement would cause things to go wrong. “Bram.”

  I waited for her to say something more, but words seemed to be beyond her now. I hurried closer. “What’s the matter?”

  She pulled her shawl tightly around her. “My baby wants to go home and die.”

  “What?” The hallway seemed to shudder. “What happened?”

  “She’s saying no to the willdisc. She’s imagined the worst—for you. For me. For everyone who’d do anything to keep her alive. She says saving her means breaking every known code of law, and now she believes fighting against death is just one big mistake.”

  “Why . . . why would she think that?” She can’t give up. “What about the surgery?”

  Triana shook her head. “She won’t consent. She says surgery means a 97 percent chance she’ll be dead before it’s over. She’d rather live out the most of what she’s got left. Bram . . .” She pulled her shawl even tighter. “Torula’s accepted her fate. And people who believe it’s all right to die while they’re dying will give up the power of their decision not to die, rendering useless the will of the mind to overrule matter. Do you understand what I mean?”

  Her words churned in my head. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “I get psych consults like this all the time. Patients who make irrational decisions about treatments they refuse to have. If she were a patient, things would be crystal-clear to me.” She looked at me with eyes that were like bottomless pits of sorrow. “I’ve lost all sight of what to do. I have no words.”

  “Just tell her . . .” I tightened my grip on my satchel’s strap. “Tell her you agree to get her discharge forms processed.”

  She took a step back. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “I have a plan, but I can’t tell you about it.”

  “I’m her mother. There’s no way I’d let you—”

  I laid a soothing hand on her shoulder. “Torula’s right. What we’re going to try is testing every known law—maybe even unknown ones. If this explodes in our faces, you have to be in the clear. You’ve got Truth to think about. And Treble.”

  Triana’s spirit seemed to go limp, her shawl falling off one shoulder.

  “Just get her discharged.” I smiled, even as my own heart pumped hard against the burden. “It’s good news, Triana. Trust me.”

  Torula sat propped up on her hospital bed. Still standing by the doorway, I could already see the apology written all over her face.

  I came to her bedside and kissed her on the forehead. Beneath the pungent odor of drugs, disinfectants, and antiseptics, I still detected the faint scent of lavender. It wasn’t her perfume. It was her.

  “What’s this I hear?” I asked. “You’re having second thoughts?”

  “I didn’t realize . . . how much was at stake for you. You could be imprisoned for this.”

  “Only if you don’t come back to me. You promised we’d leave Earth together, remember?”

  She gave a wan smile. “We both know you’re the one meant for Pangaea.”

  “Hey, I can’t leave without the only thing I have. It’s not something I ever owned. But it’s everything I ever wanted.”

  She reached out and held my hand. “Bram, you have to let me go.”

  “Go?” She’d just wrenched my heart out, but I acted as if it were still calmly beating. “Wait, are you backing out on me? You said you were going to help prove my Rembrance theorem. You volunteered.”

  She let out a breath for a chuckle. “You said so yourself. Rembrance isn’t real.”

  “Of course I’d say that. I was trying to be humble.” I forced out a grin.

  “Slow coffee. Slash. Fast sugar. Slash. Stilettos. It’s just an abstract thought scribbled in your sketchpad.”

  “But—” I clutched the thick strap of my satchel. “Every idea starts out abstract, right?” I slipped off the bag and slowly took out my paper-bound hobby, wishing I hadn’t removed the sheet holding those random thoughts I’d scrawled down weeks ago. I flipped through the pages, skipping over doodles, discarded daydreams, and failed equations. “To be honest, I once doubted what your mother said about Mickey Mouse and Harry Potter. About how train rides can put people in the zone. Turns out . . .” I stopped at a page and showed it to her. “. . . some plane rides can have the same effect.”

  Her eyes widened at the sight of the formula I was toying with. “That isn’t—” She stared at me. “Is it?”

  “It’s still a work in progress, so you’re seeing it prematurely.” I lowered the bed’s side rail so I could explain the equation to her. “This product is the key: Hn. It needs to be greater than or equal to the value set by Rembrance for a hyperwill to be generated.” I smiled with all the hope in the world bursting from inside of me. “And I can tell you— the product of your equation is far greater than the minimum we need.” I pointed at a letter L. “This fellow over here is supposed to stand for the quantum of life—whatever that might be. It’s with regard to your frequency, and I’ve tentatively given it this value in relation to Planck’s constant. Maybe you can give it a name? You love making up words.”

  She just kept staring at me, dumbstruck, not even bothering to look at my notebook. I was worried she was having another seizure.

  “Anyway,” I shifted my finger to the next symbol, the letter S. “There’s no escaping the effects of this: Entropy. But we also have this.”

  Her brow crinkled. “Is that . . . God?”

  “What?” I glanced at my own writing, confused by her question.

  “Isn’t that a crucifix?”

  “No, that’s a T. It’s my symbol for you.”

  “Me?”

  “Your faith. One’s unwavering belief in life after death. Or that there’s a Heaven. Or reincarnation. Or a willdisc waiting somewhere.”

  She squinted at me. “Starr would condemn you to hell for reducing faith in Heaven to a factor in an equation.”

  “You’ll be surprised. She gave me the idea.”

  “She’d never.”

  I chuckled. It did sound far-fetched. “Starr told me that belief in an afterlife is hardwired into the human psyche. That it’s like a cross-cultural constant that evolution voted in favor of. Your mother, on the other hand, thinks it’s like a Dawkins meme that helps keep humanity sane. Either way, it must be an important factor, and neurotheologists should be able to put a number to it—how much we believe that we can outlive death.”

  “And what’s this last symbol?” she asked, tapping on the letter I.

  “That’s a Japanese term your mother learned from your father. Ikigai.”

  She smiled. “A purpose.”

  “Yes. It’s different things for different people. I imagine it to be the hyper force that drives the will to survive. A force so powerful, in fact, that even when one has a shortage on the ot
her factors, a hyperwill can manage to survive with just enough of this one factor. Sort of like momentum—even if you don’t have enough fuel, this can keep you going.”

  “So, in effect this ‘I’ is simply a reason to . . .”

  “Live.” My voice trembled over the single syllable I was begging her to do.

  I put the sketchpad aside and composed myself before looking into her eyes to wait for the spark of hope to return. “So does that compute for you?”

  “That depends. Will you still try for Pangaea, minus me?”

  “Of course not. That equation doesn’t exist.”

  She shook her head. “You made a promise to your parents.”

  “To chase the dream, no matter what?” I smiled. “I think I’m old enough to make up my own mind by now.”

  “I made a promise too, you know. That I would make sure you never gave up on that dream.”

  I looked at her askance. “That’s not something I would have asked of you.”

  “You didn’t. Your mother did.”

  “My mother?” I flashed back as far as I could but found no recollection.

  “The morning of their flight.” She reached out and laid her hand on mine. “She called me saying she’d woken up from a vivid dream, and it left her feeling something terribly bad was going to happen.”

  I leaned away and shook my head. “That doesn’t sound like my mother. She didn’t believe in anything like that.”

  Torula bit her lower lip. “She knew you’d say that. She also knew you’d be upset about many things.”

  “What things?”

  “If you knew she’d called me instead of you. And that she was going on the plane anyway despite her reservations. And if the worst did happen, she’d be letting you down for not fulfilling her promise of helping you reach your dream. Which was why . . .” She shrugged. “. . . she made me promise too.”

  I pulled away slowly as I tried to process what she’d said. “Why would she? It’s not like her at all.”

  “Maybe. But if you woke up believing you’d just had a prophetic dream of your own death, and you had a child, what would you do?”

  “Go on with life as usual.”

  “Which was what she did. But only after making that call to me.”

  This was too surreal. Was she just making this up to convince me to join Pangaea? “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “Like I said, she thought it would upset you, regardless of when I told you. So why tell you?”

  “But you’re telling me now.”

  She reached out and touched my cheek. “Because you think you can let go of your promise to your parents. Because you believe they’re no longer here. That it wouldn’t matter. But I believe differently. Your mother’s last act was to make sure you’d go the distance. Through me. So now, I need you to reaffirm that promise.”

  I took in a deep and ragged breath. “I promise. I’ll apply for Pangaea—and you’ll come with me, after I bring you back from the willdisc.”

  Sadness brimmed in her eyes. “Bram, the procedure you’re planning is a crime. Even if you succeed, it will still be labeled a crime. There’s no way NASA would take you back after that.”

  I smiled. “Not if they’re on our side.”

  “What?”

  I gently tilted her chin up so I could look in her eyes. “NASA has agreed to lend us technology for the procedure. I’m supposed to get you to the Ames Research Center by morning.”

  Her gaze faltered. “Have I gone delirious? What you’re saying—it can’t be true.”

  “It’s all true.”

  “NASA . . . will break the law?”

  “There’s a term I got from their doctors. Deep hypothermic circulatory arrest. It’s a legal medical technique that would stand up in the courts of law. You want to hear the plan?”

  She nodded. Tentatively.

  I drew closer, eager to tell her all I could. “They’re letting us use a cryogenic chamber to work around the four-minute limit of brain cells. Liquid nitrogen can lower the temperature of the Faraday cage—up to 120 degrees below, but that’s way more than what we need. They’ll also employ antifreeze proteins—biological antifreeze found in all kinds of creatures that manage to survive in subzero conditions.”

  “Is this real?” Her gaze flicked from one eye to the other, as though trying to catch a lie. “You’ve convinced NASA to—”

  “They’re not exactly ‘convinced.’ But they’re used to getting into things no one else would bother to try.”

  “Why would they do this?”

  “Because we boldly go where no man has gone before.” I tapped my finger on her nose. “Or woman.”

  “Oh, Bram. Don’t you see?” Tears brimmed in her eyes. “I’ll just be your burden. My mom’s burden. My brothers’. And now, even NASA’s? It’s irrational. I’ll be an immortal curse you won’t be able to shake.”

  There was something about her words that triggered an inexplicable thrill. It was as though I’d been given an impossible mystery to solve, and I’d just spotted a clue that had been hiding in plain sight. Now all that jabber from Triana about “the power of her decision not to die” made sense. Suddenly, the equation in my head shifted, and it told me: This was going to work.

  “The way you’re talking . . .” A warm flush coursed through my body. “Spore, it’s like you already know you’re going to make it. You’re already living through what it will be like afterwards.”

  “A living hell for you.”

  “What are you talking about? All we have to do is keep you safe in a willdisc in a cube. And when the time comes, I’ll bring you back—the way you are.” I gave a quick shrug. “Piece of cake.”

  She chuckled even as tears brimmed in her eyes. “You can’t even take care of a potted plant. Now you want to be responsible for someone’s soul?”

  “Not just anyone’s soul. It belongs to my queen.”

  Her tears fell.

  I took out my handkerchief from my pocket. “If I could do this for you, I would. But I wouldn’t have a chance at making it. You know why?” I wiped her tears away. “Because it all begins with belief. And your faith that life itself is immortal never wavered.”

  She took a shaky, labored breath, and I cupped her face in my hands, as though to grab hold of the spirit her disease was stealing away.

  “There is a reason why you have to do this. A very meaningful and noble reason why you have to go to the other side and come back.” I paused and steadied myself. “It’s to give everyone hope. To convince even the stubborn ones like me that what seems impossible is real. That the end is really just an option, and that you can choose to stay. Do this, and you give humanity more than just faith in life that exists beyond what we can see. Show the world that happiness can last. And so can love. And so can we.”

  61

  Transition

  Doctors and technicians surrounded the surgical table, a tense huddle in a cold and clinical room of wall-to-wall white. I gulped down the bitter taste of dread as I stood mere meters away—a reluctant witness to this new system designed to end a human life.

  In a straightforward tone, the order to begin the procedure came crisp and clear.

  “Transition, Stage One, commence.”

  Transition. It was the term Roy had given the procedure for Boner’s changeover from a once running, playful, barking dog to captured memories in a disc. Now, at the Ames Research Center, scientists were applying the same term to Torula’s last hope.

  I crossed my arms and stepped back.

  A robotic arm maneuvered a syringe into position and, with swift precision, delivered the injection straight into the ventricular chamber of the heart. A soft groan rumbled in my throat as monitors sounded their alarms, registering the medical emergency triggered by the lethal cocktail.

  The black-haired mannequin, with the same build as Torula, lay with its eyes closed and mouth wide open, its drug recognition and response system giving everyone in the room a stark p
icture of what would happen to a real patient.

  Dead in eighteen seconds.

  I stared at the medical dummy, so lifelike in its portrayal of death. Christ. I forced myself to keep looking and listening. Maybe if I watched the dry-run enough times, I’d manage to hold myself together—through the real thing.

  Medical jargon flew around as doctors discussed the results of this and earlier test runs. They seemed satisfied, perhaps even impressed.

  “I’m glad it wasn’t me who had to come up with the cocktail for this,” said a woman amidst the huddle. “Whoever it was, I wonder how he dealt with the thought of what he had to do.”

  “What makes you so sure it wasn’t a she?” asked one other doctor.

  “Or a they,” said another.

  I walked away, not wanting to give them any hint I knew the answer. That it was the patient’s brother who had finally agreed to his sister’s pre-arranged death—and helped with it. But Tromino’s identity had to remain concealed; he had a medical career to protect and a family to care for.

  Same as Dr. Grant. Part of the agreement for us to proceed was for his involvement to be kept secret, which was perfectly understandable. The director of the Johnson Space Center was tasked to take humans farther out into space—not into the afterworld.

  “Well, I’ll be Jesus’ ass enterin’ Jerusalem.”

  Roy came strutting towards me, giving me an exaggerated once-over. From my gray slacks to my pullover in vanilla white. Smooth shave. Neat hair. I probably looked like a man about to ask for a woman’s hand in marriage.

  He took a deep, audible whiff of my cologne then raised his brows. “I think you’ve found your peace and coasted past nirvana.”