The New Assault

by Steven Spellman

  As soon as Julia entered the bathroom and shut the door behind her, Sam reached out with his mind toward the bottom of the mountain. He was immediately overwhelmed by the presence of hundreds of telepathic minds, every one of them stronger than his own. He tried to close his mind, but he couldn’t. He was beginning to panic when he heard the voice of Dr. Crangler, “Be still, and know that I am here.” It was a strange thing to say but it did force Sam to calm himself enough to pay attention. Now that he was paying attention he noticed that he wasn’t, in fact, being overwhelmed. There were many more telepathic minds at the base of the mountain than he’d ever experienced but they all shared a singular purpose, to build the epic tower the Doctor had already shown Sam. There wasn’t the chaotic noise that Sam had grown used to from the townspeople. There was real order down there, in work and in thought. It was strange to telepathically behold so many different people possessed of the same motivation.

  “And this is only a small fraction of those that are to come, my son!” Dr. Crangler said. Sam walked to the porch. There he sat in his favorite seat and reached out with his mind once more. Had the Doctor already begun to bring his ambitious vision to fruition? The proof was right there before Sam’s mind. For, there was another thing the many different people down below shared in their work. It was a name, a name that was in every mind. It was the name that had brought them here, the banner that every one of them, from youngest to oldest, male or female, black or white, labored beneath. Capital City. Sam could see in their minds that it was what the great tower was to be called. It was what it was called even now, even before its existence. Capital City. The profusion of the new species of humanity that the Doctor had envisioned would rule from Capital City and the Doctor’s army would protect it from enemies near and far, far away. It was those Enemies far, far away that the doctor planned to deal with first, as soon as Capital City was erected. As Sam peered into the many minds individually, he sensed that each of them knew he was there. Of course, they did. The weakest of them was much stronger than he was.

  But nearly as startling as their remarkable order was their reserve. They could all sense Sam’s mental presence, but no one seemed concerned. No one tried to block out his mind, as any one of them could’ve done easily. Neither did any one of them offer retaliation. In fact, he sensed that they were honored to have him eavesdrop upon their minds. He reached further into their minds, looked into some of their memories, and found that the doctor had prepared them for this. Every one of these people, just as everyone else on the planet, had heard of the Simmons family and especially the youngest Simmons, but through the doctor they had met him directly. At least mentally. Through the doctor, these people had experienced most of what Sam himself had experienced. They knew what his hopes and fears were. They were familiar with his daily burden nearly as intimately as if everyone one of them had been a close family member. When Sam saw all this, he recoiled at the realization that these people knew him so well. He was used to seeing behind the veil that everyone in the town normally lived behind, but to know that so many had seen behind his veil for so long was unsettling. It was more than unsettling, it was discombobulating.

  Sam sensed amusement from the telepathic crowd. To them his reaction was like that of a very small child who’d only just discovered that he has been naked before adults his entire short life. Thankfully, he could also sense that their amusement was not derision. They had all been children exposed in the same sense that he was now. The difference was that they had had time to acclimate. They were well used to their nakedness before each other by this time. It also drove home another point, that telepathy defied the constraints of time as Sam knew it. By opening Sam’s experiences to these people, the Doctor had allowed them to feel as he felt, experiences that were long past. Some of the people at the base of the mountain were younger than Sam was, and they had shared in experiences he’d had before they had been born. Thanks to the freedom of telepathy they’d shared in those experiences, the sights and sounds, every detail of sensation, as intimately as Sam had. For all practical purposes, they had been there, ushered through the annuls of his memory, even though they had not yet existed when those memoires were being forged. It was a daunting task for Sam to take it all in. He sensed the same amusement as before from the crowd as well as from the Doctor. “You do not take it in, my son. It takes you.” Dr. Crangler said.

  Sam thought he understood. Telepathy, and everything that came with it, was not something simply inside his head. It was a phenomenon that had claimed him and would never let him go. Like the Virus, it had come without warning or permission and it didn’t matter if it were wrong or right, it was here. The Doctor may’ve wielded excessive influence but even he did not control the phenomena itself. He could only guide it and since it was already here to stay, it needed to be guided. Didn’t it?

  A brave New World indeed! It was one that Sam would just have to learn to live inside of. He sensed approval from the minds below and knew that they had asked the same questions. There could be no easy answers, only cooperation. Sam closed his mind and took a deep breath. He would have to tell Julia what was happening, and he would have to tell her now.

  CHAPTER 23

  For the most part, Julia sat quietly for the forty-five minutes that it took Sam to fuddle through the account of what was happening to the world that she’d known. She asked a question every so often, questions that surprised Sam—they were questions that showed that she was much more perceptive than he had been when Geoffrey had begun explaining all this to him—and she didn’t seem nearly as overwhelmed as he remembered himself feeling. There was but one thing that Sam omitted, but once he’d finished with his lengthy account Julia picked up on it almost immediately.

  “So, you’ve read my mind before, too?” she asked as she turned away. The two of them had been sitting upon Sam’s porch. She stood now and walked to the railing and gazed out over the city, at the same spot as before. The place she no longer thought of as home.

  Sam didn’t answer immediately, but there was no way around it. “Yes.” He said softly. He braced himself for her to ask how much of her mind had he read. He decided he would answer that truthfully as well even though he didn’t think it would help matters. Julia’s face was turned away, but Sam could see in the stiffness of her posture, the tightness of her shoulder blades, that she wasn’t happy about finding out that her privacy had been invaded thoroughly. Sam searched his mind desperately for something to say, anything to ease the blow Julia must feel at discovering that someone had looked into her most private thoughts, but he could find nothing. At last, he blurted out the only thing he could think of. “But I stopped! I… I …” he stammered “I decided that I would never use my telepathy on you again.” Again, Sam struggled to think of something that he could do or say to prove his genuine sincerity and he might’ve come up short yet again, but while his mind raced Julia turned and with a final heated glare in his direction, she began to storm off toward the staircase.

  “I’ve got to get out of here!” It was the only explanation she gave as she stomped heavily toward the staircase’s entrance. It produced a deathly sinking feeling in the pit of Sam’s stomach to watch her go.

  “Don’t go!” he yelled, but not just because he loved her, “There are hundreds of telepaths down there at the bottom of the mountain.” Julia stopped in her tracks just before she reached the staircase, “Even the small kids of these people are stronger than I am. Any one of them can look more deeply into your mind than I can.”

  “Well…” she began, and Sam could hear the anger in her voice, “can’t they read my mind from down there?”

  They certainly could, Sam knew. He would’ve never put that together so quickly had this been his first time learning everything he’d just old Julia. Either way, he seemed to be making a real mess of things. “Please, Julia, just stay here, at least until you’ve had some time to think. I’ll go down there so you can be alone.” Julia remained where she stood. She to
ok a single step forward and peered down the staircase. With a clearly audible huff she turned on her heels and walked briskly by Sam without a passing glance. She might never speak to Sam again, her face said, but he was glad she’d decided to remain in his house. That was something if not exactly everything. As Sam began to descend the staircase, he thought to himself how true it was what Julia had already surmised, that distance made no difference here. If she were in danger she would be no safer atop this mountain than at the base of it. Sam reached out with his mind to touch the others’ at the bottom. It wasn’t until he touched minds with them that he realized he didn’t really know what to ask. It was likely that they knew every one of her experiences as intimately as she herself did. What was Sam supposed to ask them to do, tune Julia completely out of their communal thoughts? Every one of them? What would he do when the rest of the telepaths arrived? Would he dare to demand the same thing of all of them, as well?

  The thought seemed absurd, especially in view of everything the Doctor had already shown him. No, he would not be able to protect Julia any more than he was able to protect himself. She would have to face the Brave New World, head on, just as he would have to. Perhaps she wouldn’t survive it. Perhaps neither of them would. “You shall not only survive,” Dr. Crangler said inside Sam’s head “you will thrive like you’ve never imagined.” Sam was no longer startled by the doctor’s unexpected voice in his brain, but when he looked up he noticed that he had nearly arrived at the bottom of the mountain. Obviously, he had been climbing down the staircase for much longer than he had realized. Julia was proving to be a potent distraction, indeed. He was close enough to see that there were no longer any guard booths at the end of his staircase. There were no guards at all in sight. Instead, there loomed the base of a very large and very thick wall. It was a wall thick enough to build comfortable living spaces inside of. There were large arched doorways already built into every section of the wall that Sam could see. He climbed down to the bottom of the mountain and turned to his left, then to his right. The wall extended as far as he could tell around the entire base of the mountain.

  It didn’t look as if the wall were made of normal bricks. The beige hue of the building material was already pale, as if it had been sitting in the sun for years. So, the tower looked ancient even from the very beginning, Sam thought, as he remembered his vision of the finished tower. But more important than the tower itself to Sam, were the telepathic workers who had raised a substantial amount of its base from scratch in a matter of hours. It would’ve taken any normal work crew an entire day and night, possibly two, to complete this work. Off in the far distance to his right Sam saw a small group of men applying mortar on either side of the thick wall. To his left he saw a small group of children carting and stacking building material. But as Sam looked around he didn’t see nearly as many of the telepathic workers as he would’ve expected. He reached out with his mind and found that the majority of the hundreds who’d already arrived were busy building another section of the wall. So, the base of the tower wasn’t finished after all, though Sam could see in the minds of the workers that its completion was close by. The base of the wall would circle the mountain before the sun set that night. It would be an amazingly impressive feat. What was equally impressive were the small children that remained behind to finish the detail on the work that had already been done. There were others, teenagers, adults, coming into Sam’s view. Some of them were measuring arches to make certain that the building materials had set properly, others who were clearing away debris, most of which would be recycled and used for other sections of the tower. There were still yet others already beginning to move small pieces of furniture into the newly built living spaces. All of it happened without confusion or a single spoken word.

  The smallest children moved amongst the workers, carrying the smallest pieces of furniture, helping with the measurements, and carrying off the most harmless pieces of debris with all the energy of very small children but with little of the clumsiness and with seemingly no supervision. No one seemed to be watching them. No one needed to. A child’s parents may be on the other side of the mountain, but they were as much in contact with that child as if they had been standing directly over him or her. More so, since no normal parent could literally see into their child’s head, and vice-versa. It was more amazing to see in person than the vision that Sam had beheld. Sam had watched ants build mounds and collect food as if the entire chaotic mass of them were a single entity. This was more impressive since even ants had to touch antennas with each other or follow a trail of pheromones left behind by other ants. Not so with these telepaths. With no need of physical communication, they could move in remarkable order with greater freedom than any animal or insect. Sam had no doubt this tower, as grand as its proportions were to be, would be completed in a tiny fraction of the time it would’ve taken otherwise. The children attracted Sam’s attention for another reason. In person he could see in their faces, in their movements, something that was just as clear in their thoughts but more palpable up close. These children were happy. They were part of something special and they knew it.

  Their identities hadn’t been swallowed in sacrifice to the Whole and they were under constant and inescapable supervision, but it didn’t hamper their moods. In fact, it added to the ease of their lives that they could communicate far beyond words. Sam could understand. He had so many questions that seemed vitally important and equally unanswerable. He thought how much easier things would’ve been had he been able to enjoy the combined mental resources of an entire nation of peoples. He wouldn’t have traded either of his parents for an entire nation, an entire world, of surrogate parents but it would’ve had its benefits. Already, Sam had learned so much from the Doctor that he hadn’t from Geoffrey. But a small voice inside Sam reminded him that everything came at a price. This New World Order, this Utopia of communication and cooperation, must have a downside. And if the price were comparable to the benefit than the price for this tower would be astronomical. The thought made Sam uneasy. The awesome things Dr. Crangler was initiating seemed to be the only way to save mankind. Maybe Sam’s unease was paranoia, or maybe it was just a part of him that was having a difficult time adjusting to the way the world was changing. Whatever it was, it was there, whether Sam could explain it or not. He thought to search the other minds here, to see if anyone else harbored such nameless suspicions, but decided against it. He didn’t think it was a good idea. These men and woman had obviously aligned themselves firmly beneath the Doctor’s banner. This mammoth tower that he had envisioned, that they themselves were building with impressive focus, was proof of that. Sam doubted any of them held any suspicions concerning the Doctor. Hopefully, his own misgivings would dissipate with time.

  Sam walked the length of the base of the tower, watching and listening. He watched and found that there was indeed order everywhere, and he listened to the minds and found that he was welcomed here. It took him nearly three days, but once he walked the entire length of the wall, he found that except for thirty or forty feet—thirty-three and a half feet exactly, as he read in the minds of those responsible for the measurements—the entire wall was in fact finished. He mentally asked the question of how long the entire tower would take to complete and received an immediate answer. The tower itself would take only a matter of months to build, but it would take nearly a year for the remainder of the telepaths to arrive to fill it. Sam asked how many there were and the crowd replied, “Everyone, of course!” Sam sensed the same amusement. It was as much common knowledge as his name that everyone was coming to build this tower. After a moment it hit Sam. By everyone, these people meant everyone. Everyone on the entire planet was on their way here, either to rule or to be ruled over, from this tower. The entire world!

  What would happen to the townspeople? Sam thought of it as he came full circle around the mountain and was reminded that the guard booths were no longer there. He reached out with his mind and found that there was only contentmen
t and bliss in any of the minds of the townspeople. Every one of them, from the richest to the poorest, were living out their most intimate fantasies, fantasies that would’ve never been possible in any of their real lives. It was easy to for Sam to see what had happened, though it was harder for him to accept. The Doctor had the entire town in the same trance as those two little children he’d kept hidden away in his ruined building. Presumably, everyone was in their homes or even out upon the streets, staring at blank walls, completely oblivious to any reality besides the artificial reality that the Doctor projected into their minds. Everyone from the mayor and his subordinates, on down to the single mother struggling to feed five children in the poorest ghetto in the city, was completely immobilized, trapped in their own personal delusion. All so this tower could be built without a fuss. Sam couldn’t deny that it was more efficient than trying to convince everyone to stay out of the way. It didn’t change his distaste at the method. For the rest of the day, as hard as he fought he found it difficult the keep the image of those two shrunken, glassy-eyed children out of his mind. The only different now was that there was an entire city filled with them.

  CHAPTER 24

  The darkness had closed in. It was nearly close enough for Sam to reach out and touch. It was close enough for the emerging hands of shadow to reach out and touch him. They reached out now, closer, closer, forcing Sam into the very middle with nowhere to go, until they at last reached his flesh. They groped and pulled, scraped and scratched, at his face, his torso, his arms and legs, until the black fingers dug into him deep enough to draw blood. The hands were everywhere, restraining his arms so he couldn’t fight, restraining his legs so he couldn’t run. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, there was no place to run to. Sam screamed—his own voice sounded foreign to him—but the darkness swallowed the sound nearly as soon as it escaped his mouth. That made things even more eerie, the sound of his own screams dying away almost instantly into the blackness. Then he realized that his screams weren’t just dying in the blackness. They were being swallowed whole in a cacophony of voices. There were thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of them if the darkness. It was difficult to tell with so many hands clawing at his person, but Sam thought the darkness might be the voices.