The Shakespeare Incident

by Jonathan Miller

  Dew pointed to a blackened spot on the sand. “Right here.”

  “What are we going to do?” Rayne asked.

  Denise looked around at the others. Denny had told her to have faith.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Denise said. “Let’s make a circle. Close your eyes. Let’s concentrate on Rayne.”

  With the sun now totally behind the Organ mountains to the west of here, the sky was dark, the road devoid of headlights.

  “I don’t get it,” Dew said. While she held Denise’s hand, she hesitated to hold Rayne’s. Rayne certainly didn’t want to hold Dew’s.

  “Concentrate on Rayne everyone!” Denise said, closing her eyes. “You too Dew. Make your mind go blank.”

  Denise opened her eyes, embarrassed. No one had closed their eyes. “Guys, we can do this. For my brother. And for both of you, we need to find out what happened.”

  “I don’t know about this,” Rayne and Dew said at the same time.

  Denise had an idea. “Rita, why don’t you get between Dew and your mom to complete the circuit, I mean complete the circle.”

  “We can do this,” Rita said. Rita got between Rayne and Dew and gripped their hands. Rayne now closed the circle with Denise who held Dew’s hand.

  “Now make your mind go blank,” Denise said. She felt an electric current go around the four of them. Everything slowly came into focus as Denise guided them inside Rayne’s mind. With multiple parties appearing in this “dream,” they were ghostly, like avatars from one of those virtual reality games. Denise could see avatars of Rita, Rayne and even Dew herself as ghostly figures hovering over the images of Dew and Rayne in the past, parked in the Mercedes in this exact place.

  There was a big box of computer disks and notebooks in the front seat.

  “I’m confused,” the avatar of Rayne said out loud and the Rayne below looked up for a second. At that moment, the sandstorm grew in intensity. Lightning crashed all around the Dew and Rayne from the past.

  “Just concentrate on being an observer,” Denise said. “You have entered your own dream.”

  It took a moment for things to calm down, the images of Dew and Rayne down below were squabbling.

  “Why did you have to take all that extra stuff?” the image of Rayne asked the Dew below. “We can get in serious shit if they find out.”

  “Do you want to win this case or not?” that Dew replied. “I wonder if you’ve ever wanted to win anything in your whole life.”

  Rayne was definitely peeved at that, but then the sandstorm grew in intensity again. “This isn’t me doing this,” the avatar of Rayne said. “This is what happened. I have a recollection of it now.”

  In the intense sandstorm, a drone appeared above the Mercedes. There were more flashes of lightning. One of the bolts hit the car. Suddenly the box of evidence vaporized.

  “What the hell?” Dew said down below. Or did the avatar of Dew from above say it?

  Another lightning bolt hit the Mercedes dead on, the current flowed over the car like the rinse cycle of a car wash. Down below, Rayne went into some sort of fugue state and attacked Dew. Scratched her, punched her, even kicked her. And yet her eyes were blank, like a zombie.

  The avatar of Rayne floating above nodded. “It was like every ounce of rage that I had ever felt toward you suddenly erupted in that instant. I had no control.”

  There was a momentary flux in the storm, and the avatars resumed their focus on what was happening below…

  Rayne had stopped attacking Dew and had exited the Mercedes, her eyes still blank. She slammed the door behind her, but Dew didn’t move. Rayne seemed to be greeting the drone. The drone then disappeared over the sand dune, and Rayne collapsed. Dew remained in the car, dazed.

  Lights approached out of the darkness to reveal another vehicle, a black van with a bike rack. Someone emerged from the van, opened the door and lifted Rayne and put her in another vehicle. Dew was still out cold in the Mercedes.

  The image down below grew less focused as Rayne was being driven away from this spot in the second vehicle. Denise worried that they were about to lose the image totally, as everything was dim, as if Rayne had only the vaguest recollection of this part as she was semi-conscious.

  There was a moment of darkness, but then the image down below reappeared. They could now see that whoever picked up Rayne was turning off the highway and parking by the lake. The figure took Rayne out to the lake and handed her a thermos that the figure had filled with water from the lake.

  “Drink this,” the voice said.

  There in the dream, Rayne’s eyes opened, and they could all see the stars and lights of the base reflected in Lake Holloman.

  “Stay here,” the figure said to the image of Rayne. “Someone will come for you. This liquid will heal you for the next twenty-four hours. Keep drinking it.”

  Denise tried to focus on the figure who picked up Rayne. She couldn’t make out the figure’s face. “Concentrate,” she said to Rayne.

  “That’s all I remember.”

  A military truck roared by them in the real world, and it honked as if in spite. That broke their reverie. The scene faded to black.

  “I think that’s enough,” Denise said. They opened their eyes. They were back in the desert, back in the present. They looked around at each other and nodded.

  “It’s past Rita’s bedtime,” Rayne said.

  “Oh mom,” Rita said.

  “You guys go home,” Denise said. “I can take it from here.”

  “Where are you going?” Dew asked. “Who rescued Rayne?”

  As if on cue, Denise’s phone buzz indicating she’d received a text. A click revealed a full moon shining on Sierra Blanca off in the distance, reflecting on a lake. Moments later the text disappeared.

  “I’m about to find out.”

  Chapter 55

  After driving due east through the blackness of the desert, Denise began her ascent into the mountains. The air thinned, the stars shined brighter, closer, with every mile. She received a few texts showing which turns to make.

  How thoughtful.

  She finally found Hikaru’s cabin and was surprised to find him waiting by the pond, seated on a log in front of a campfire that reflected off the water. He was in his cycling outfit and his mountain bike was parked against the side of the log; an extra-large backpack was awkwardly attached to the bike. A second bike, her bike from their “Roswell incident,” leaned against the other side of the log.

  “I was expecting you,” he said. “I don’t have much time.”

  She sat down on the log and held his hand. “So, tell me what is really going on here?”

  He opened a picnic basket to reveal a silver grail.

  “The alpha grail.” He filled it with pond water. This one was a bit smaller than the Omega. It even had some dents on the sides.

  “Stand back.” He then held the grail over the fire, the water bubbled, and he sprinkled in some powder with his free hand. A steam cloud formed above them, Denise half-expected him to pull a rabbit out of the grail.

  Instead, there was something even more amazing. There was a projection in the steam. Wait, was that a moving image of young Hikaru picking up this very grail? The image repeated a few times like an internet meme. The cloud disappeared leaving only darkness.

  “Let me guess, you were the first winner of the 24 Grails Contest?” she asked.

  “Guilty as charged,” he said. “This one was up at Los Alamos on the edge of the mesa. I had just graduated from college, a little unsure of what I was doing with my life. I was going to stay home and write a fan-fiction Star Trek spec screenplay—Mr. Sulu infiltrates the Klingons—but then I found this in my backyard.”

  “The people were the prize not the grails,” Denise said. “They were supposed to be a beacon for people with psychic abilities. Something like th
at?”

  “That’s part of what they do, the grails are a beacon and even a portal. Technically they would be called a BCI for brain-computer interface.”

  “They also intensify emotions in people with psychic powers, no?”

  “Now you’re getting it. Unfortunately. a machine that amplifies human emotions might have some military applications. And not just our military.”

  “Did the US military make them? Is there really a Cygnus Moon or is it a front for someone or something else?”

  “Cygnus Moon is a real corporation here on earth if that’s what you’re asking. The people who work for them are very much human. They do work for our military and also for the Chinese, Russians, Israelis, you name it. And they sometimes enter into what we would call joint ventures with unidentified parties.”

  “Unidentified flying object parties?” Denise asked.

  “That’s above my paygrade,” he said. “Way above my pay grade.”

  “But what does that have to do with Denny? What do they have to do with me?”

  “I’ll show you,” he took her hand.

  Denise was a little leery. “Ummm… can’t you put the information on a thumb drive? I can download it later onto my umm… hard drive.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think you understand. What I’m about to give you is highly classified. I had hoped that Rayne and Dew would have been able to obtain this material legally and it wouldn’t be an issue. Unfortunately, you saw what happened. I guess Dew got more information than anyone bargained for. They must have triggered someone or something and that pissed off the people or parties above. I had no idea that any of that would happen. I couldn’t let anyone know that I rescued Rayne.”

  “Are you still a part of… whatever it is?”

  “Not even. But for your safety it’s got to be this way that I give you the information, so no one knows about it. I don’t want what happened to your friends to happen to you.”

  She stared at the grail as he put it in front of her. “Is it safe?”

  “It is when you are with me. You don’t want to kill me, do you? Because that could be an issue. As we know, the grails can intensify emotions.”

  “Should I want to kill you?”

  “No, I’m on your side, or I will be.”

  She hesitated, and then nodded. “What do I do?”

  “Grab one handle and I’ll grab the other. This will be more information than a simple gif.”

  Before reaching over, a reassuring current enveloped her entire being, almost as if she was sitting in the world’s most relaxing vibrating chair. She could trust him completely.

  Denise now noticed a narrow beam of light between the grail and the pond. Hikaru indicated that she should touch the handle.

  “You promise me that this is safe?” she asked.

  “As safe as touching a mysterious object that utilizes unproved and possibly alien technology can be. There might be a slight shock,” he said.

  The shock was slightly more intense than she expected, but not unpleasant. Again, it reminded her of a massage chair in a nail salon where her mother once took her to a mani-pedi on a rare mother-daughter outing. She almost didn’t want to let go, but then the vibration stopped, and the grail fell to the ground.

  “What just happened?”

  “It was the interface. I transferred a few gigabytes of information to the grail which then transferred them to you. Did it hurt?”

  “Not at all, it actually felt good, but I feel like I have some kind of clot or something in my head.”

  “Close your eyes and count from ten to one backward.”

  Denise closed her eyes and counted. When she reached one, the clot released and she realized that she did have access to considerable information, as if a zip drive had been implanted into her brain.

  “What just happened? I suddenly have all this data. She thought of the Keanu Reeves film, Johnny Mnemonic. She next thought of Keanu in The Matrix. In both films, her idol was able to retain all this new information in his brain, permanently.

  “You’ve seen it in a million bad science fiction movies,” Hikaru said. “Brain-computer interface. I was able to store information in a section of my brain and then transfer it to your brain. It’s not really psychic, it’s electronic. The grail just facilitates the transfer by removing the static and extraneous stuff.”

  “Is it permanent?”

  “It’s like your regular memory—you can forget—unless you get an implant in your cerebellum like I’ve done. But you’ll be able to retrieve it over the next twenty-four hours. You’ll be able to retain the broad strokes forever. You might want to close your eyes and try to retrieve it.”

  “What will I retrieve?”

  “These are the records that you guys were trying to access. They consist of recordings of meetings and archived videos of Denny while he was on duty.”

  “So, these aren’t dreams?”

  “They’re real. I made them myself from real data and then uploaded them using the alpha grail. Let’s try it now to make sure it works.”

  Once her mind adjusted to the mental image of the data download, she could picture various icons arranged like a tic-tac-toe board. Each square held an image of a white carboard banker’s box. She “opened” a “box” labeled as number one in the upper left-hand corner. The box opened to reveal some footage of Denny working with Hikaru at the White Sands Missile Range. She recognized the WSMR logo on badges for both of them, but there was another logo for something called Syrinx Mission Control. The logo had the nearby Organ Mountains somehow incorporating cartoon organ pipes. Denny wasn’t in uniform, indicating he was a civilian employee of the WSMR. The video showed a warm relation between the two.

  She then focused on the second box. She saw a meeting of military brass in an unmarked boardroom with a view out onto White Sands. The military was having some issues with their guidance systems in flight and several missiles had crashed or exploded. Someone had suspected that China or Russia was using weaponized psychics to hack into the guidance systems created by an American company.

  Box three was in the upper right corner. At a subsequent military meeting, a video showed the parties voting to authorize funding for addressing the issue and setting up the grail system as a way of finding people with psychic abilities who could be recruited—or identified as potential risks.

  Box four was back on the left side, in the middle. It was a FaceTime between Hikaru and representatives of Cygnus Moon. Hikaru complained about the safety issues—some type of radiation leaks. Mr. Choi from the Korean plant told them in halting English that they were “working on it.”

  Apparently, the plant had a history of “issues” during the manufacture of the grails and her mother’s incident was their only breakdown.

  She couldn’t open the middle square. She tried again, and now noticed a big metal lock on the lid of a banker’s box. It actually felt like the lock was hitting her smack dab in the forehead.

  She skipped forward to the next box. In the middle row on the far right was the crime scene video shot from the lapel cams. She’d seen it before, but she was still shocked by the act of violence committed by her brother and his dazed expression. She also realized that the lapel videos shown by the cops had been edited. While the drone itself was not visible, she could now clearly see a light coming from above, like a spotlight shining on Denny.

  “Denny,” she asked out loud. “What happened to you that night?”

  As if to answer her, her attention directed itself to the bottom row of boxes. A new series of images now appeared in her brain that appeared to have been taken by a hidden cell phone. Denny was now in his twenties was responsible for beta-testing the grails somewhere in the desert. Denny was clearly affected when he was near the grails, but apparently that was part of the testing process. The last square in the bottom right c
orner portrayed chemists taking samples of the Lake Holloman “water.” Results came back as UNKNOWN, NO EARTHLY MATCH.

  Had aliens been dumping toxic waste in the lake? The more likely explanation was that the military was flushing their own rocket fuel there, but that didn’t make her feel any better.

  When she had finished with the bottom of row of squares, she tried the center one again. There was still that damn lock on it, and it hurt to think about it.

  “I’m not getting anything more,” Denise said. She opened her eyes. She had a slight headache from the lockbox. “I couldn’t unlock the center square.”

  Hikaru touched his own forehead as if probing it. “I guess the center square isn’t filled in yet. I must still be transmitting, and it won’t open till it’s done.”

  “When will it finish transmitting?”

  “Probably when I’m dead. I told you that there’s an implant in my brain that has some kind of regulator. It shows up in your vision as a “lock.” Once the regulator is no longer in place, it will be unlocked. I’m sure there will be a final burst of data that will be released to the final box and you can access it.”

  “Well, I don’t think we want that.” She touched him on the arm. “You’re going to have to testify in court about what you know.”

  He looked down at his phone. He didn’t get a text, he got something else. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. I’ve got to get moving, like right now. I was in danger before, but by giving you this, they might try to terminate me. Terminate with extreme prejudice.”

  He took the grail and opened a thermos on his bike. He poured fluid into the grail, fluid with the unmistakable odor of that lake. Without even a potholder, he held the grail over the fire for a moment, and the water boiled, and yet he was able to hold onto it without being burnt. If that wasn’t enough, the grail suddenly disintegrated in a puff of smelly steam.