by Jack L Knapp
I could feel the coolness of the liquid as she painted the operation area with disinfectant. Finally, she spread a towel over my shoulders and another across the back of my head.
In my little tent, I waited. I could hear a rustle as she set her instruments-tray in position where it would be handy. Ray moved the rolling table to where Shezzie wanted it and directed the light to illuminate my neck.
“OK, I’m ready. You’ll feel a small sting where I make the first local anesthetic injection. I’ll make two more, but I don’t expect you’ll feel them.”
I felt it, right enough, but it wasn't all that bad. After that, I didn’t feel much of anything back there that was different. Maybe I would feel it when I got up. Would the neck muscles work normally, or would the local anesthetic paralyze them temporarily like sometimes happens to your lip from a dentist’s injection?
“Tell me if you feel this.” I felt only a slight shake, and said so. It happened again, a little more violently.
“Ray, I’m ready to begin. I’ll tell you what I need. I can reach my own instruments, so most of the time you’ll be passing gauze squares to absorb blood, although I don’t anticipate much bleeding. You’ll also have to use that squeeze bottle of Ringer’s solution. It’s primarily a sterile rinse of distilled water and some salts, and sometimes it’s called physiological saline because it’s nearly the same mix as is found in blood plasma. You’ll be using it as a rinse to get a good view of the object as soon as I’ve opened the incision and retracted the sides.”
“T, you shouldn’t feel any pain, so I’m not going to try to restrain your hands. Just hold still and let me work, and we should be done inside a minute. After the device is out, I’ll suture the layers of muscle tissue, working my way from the inside out, then suturing the skin layers last. Any questions?”
I had none, and then the room grew quiet. I didn't feel Shezzie doing anything, but obviously something was happening.
A moment later, I heard “Sponge” and then “Rinse and sponge.” Not loud, she was just muttering, but Ray could clearly hear her. I could feel something, probably the rinse, dribble down the side of my neck. Maybe Ray was a little sloppy with his sponging.
I concentrated on remaining still. There was a peculiar sensation for a moment, and I wondered if this was Ray doing something. And then again, Shezzie said, “Sponge.”
Finally, “I’ll hand you the retractor as soon as I release it. Just lay it on the tray.”
A slight rustle. Could it really be over this soon?
“T, I’m closing the incision now. I’ll work on the muscle layers first, three sutures should be enough I think, even though the muscles here are under constant use as you move your head, then I’ll do the layers of skin. The surface incision is slightly longer, so I’ll use four sutures to close that. I needed to make a slightly longer opening to help Ray locate the device, but it presented no technical problems.
“After I finish the suturing, I’ll disinfect the surface one last time and apply a small dressing. I should be able to remove that in a day or two. You’ll have little or no scarring, and if you leave your hair long no one will notice.
“As much as anything, I’m depending on the healing powers you’ve described where your body makes automatic corrections. There's no need to overwork that Talent, and anyway I used standard techniques for minor surgery. The local anesthesia was likely to last long enough, unless there were complications, and I had a second injection ready in case it was needed. I have no idea if general anesthesia would have worked anyway, considering that body-monitoring Talent of yours, plus I’d have needed the professional services of an anesthesiologist or a nurse-anesthetist. Just make sure you never get wounded badly enough that you have to find out the hard way if general anesthesia will work on you.”
I waited, she stitched, Ray stood and watched. Finally she told me I could stand.
“You’ll have some slight problems with muscle control, but they should wear off soon. I’ll just help you to a chair and you can relax while you're recovering. Lean your head back against the headrest and just relax; I can give you aspirin or Tylenol, but they may not help much.”
I waited for a while, but I was impatient. I wanted to see what they’d removed from my neck.
It wasn’t much, but it was still bigger than what I’d expected. Slightly smaller than a pea, it was rounded on top and flat on the bottom. I asked Ray to open the door, then I grasped the thing and floated it outside. As soon as it was clear of the door, I crunched down hard and it popped. There wasn't much of an explosion, almost an anticlimax; it didn’t seem dangerous. Unless, of course, it had been tamped by the structure of my neck and the force directed into my spinal cord.
But it was finally out and destroyed, the thing that had driven me from the Army and forced me to hide for two years. The device was gone, Henderson was gone, and except for me, even the School was gone. I felt a moment of sorrow for Surfer; If he’d only waited!
I would still have to avoid having my fingerprints taken, but other than that, my past was gone. I thought about Shezzie; she had a past too. But with what we’d discovered, her new life promised to be much more rewarding, in terms of what she might accomplish, than anything she’d have achieved assisting surgeons.
And Ray; he was evolving faster than I was. I had no idea what he might someday be able to accomplish, and for that matter what the three of us might do about selectively awakening the Talent in others. Ray was also very near to deciding if Ana Maria was going to be a permanent part of his life, assuming she felt the same as he did. I wished him well.
I thought the three of us would remain associated, but I didn’t know what that association would be. Shezzie and I would put our recent minor problems behind us and take time to re-bond.
Ray had a small income, but like the rest of us, he always had the option of working the casino circuit if all else failed. Perhaps we would go into business together, Ray as the front man, me in the background providing services with my Talent. Shezzie might be a part of that venture, or she might be a medical consultant of some type. Maybe she would vet and train new recruits who looked like they could benefit from an awakened Talent, and of course be trustworthy enough for us to allow that Talent to awaken.
It would be a future quite ordinary in most ways.
After all that had happened to me in the last three years, I was looking forward to that ordinary life.
Epilogue
“Morning, Bill.”
“Good morning, Director. I hoped you could spare a few minutes for me.”
“Let me get a cup of coffee first. Help yourself. I can give you fifteen minutes, but I’ve got a meeting after that. What’s on your mind?”
“I’ve come across a possible problem, Director. One of our people”--a momentary look of distaste--“had a bright idea. He managed to spend more than half a billion dollars on a crack-brained scheme before anyone found out about it. I ordered an end to it as soon as I found out, of course. What if Congress had gotten wind of it? Disaster! The Army was also involved, and they cleaned up their part, or at least I thought they did. I no longer think that's the case.”
“Tell me more, Bill. You said one of our people did this. Is he still with us?”
“No, sir. He was an associate, not a full employee, and he died in a traffic accident. Just one of those things. But he had the bright idea of sending an undertrained man--God only knows what he was thinking!--to the Army. They sent the man to Afghanistan, and now they’ve lost him.”
“How can they just lose someone? I thought they were better than that.”
“Apparently not, sir. Wonder of wonders, this man actually completed a full tour as a soldier, even saw considerable combat. But they have no record of sending him back here, they can’t locate him, and now they’re wondering what to do. He’s our employee more than he ever was theirs.
"It’s not certain how much this man, a warrant officer named Tagliaferro, was told about that arrang
ement. It's even possible that he knew nothing, that he believed he was a real soldier. As I said, the whole idea was poorly conceived. I thought the matter was finished after I shut down the School and the former commandant was killed, but now this loose end has cropped up. There's a report in the files from a General Adams. He thinks this man was killed or captured; at any rate, he hasn’t turned up, and the last report forwarded to us was dated more than a year ago. Apparently Tagliaferro just disappeared from inside a guarded military base. There was no sign of foul play, no record he ever left the base, but he's gone. He just disappeared.”
“It appears there was more to this almost-agent of ours than anyone knew, Bill. We could always use a resourceful man like that. But he’s gone?”
“Yes, sir. Only a few records remain, just enough to make the Army curious if anyone stumbled over them. If a reporter found something, it's even possible that this could involve us.”
“So if the remaining records were to disappear, there’s no way of anyone tracing this back to us?”
“That’s my conclusion, Director. If the man was captured and he shows up later, we could make discreet funds available to ransom him. We’ve done that before, do a transfer from a black account that’s not audited.”
“OK, Bill, make it happen. Put a note in the file before you inactivate it; say I approved a reasonable effort to free the man if he ever turns up. Talk to Josh; all those geeks he’s got, surely he's got one that can purge the Army’s files. Have him clear every record they have that this man ever served.
“It’s just as well that person you mentioned died. Traffic accident you said? Did we have anything to do with it?”
“No, sir. It really was an accident, a minor thing really, just a fender bender. There was an autopsy that concluded he had a heart attack.”
“I’ve got that meeting, Bill; was there anything else? Can I depend on you to clean this thing up, make sure the Army won’t be asking questions that could embarrass us?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Bill. Send Andy in as you go out, please.”
Dismissed, Bill left and closed the door softly behind him.
“You’re to go in, Andy. Is Josh part of this meeting?”
“No, sir. Did you want to see him?”
“I’m sure he’s in his office, or his secretary will know where he is. I’ll just take the elevator and see him there. Have a nice day, Andy.”
“You too, sir.”
#
Josh did indeed have a number of geeks in his department. One of them made short work of the assignment; it wasn’t very challenging, after all. Just search for the name, delete what came up, and do it again.
References began to disappear.
Soon, all the Army's remaining records of a onetime soldier named Tagliaferro were gone. Paper documents had already been transferred to electronic form months before and the papers shredded. A few people would remember the man, but their memories would fade in time.
Only a single flagged electronic notice remained, this one in agency storage files. The reference's alert would be triggered if the search string included the name Tagliaferro and was associated with other words indicating he had returned from captivity in the Middle East. If accessed, the alert would tell the agency to follow the supplied directions and look for a certain file folder that was tucked away in the back of a seldom-used safe.
The folder was code-named Combat Wizard and contained the reports of military activities where some sort of paranormal abilities had been used. They had been generated by Tagliaferro and sent up through channels. Most had never been read; the man appeared to have an unusual ability, but it was so weak as to be virtually useless, and his activities did nothing to advance the agency's intelligence-gathering mission. An analyst saw the first few reports but soon learned to ignore them; he had more important things to consider.
Still, the agency owed him something; should a captive named CWO Tagliaferro ever turn up, instructions in the file would reactivate it, and the agency's people would do what they could to free the man.
The Combat Wizard file might be declassified one day, perhaps fifty years hence, or possibly not; some files were deemed too sensitive for public release, even after half a century. Such files were simply shredded and the electronic records deleted, especially if the file in question had never received public scrutiny.
But reactivation of the file was unlikely, given the circumstances. If insurgents were holding the man, they’d have mentioned it by now. Keeping the existence of prisoners secret was of no benefit to them.
No, the man was almost certainly dead.
In the end, only an inactive file, locked in a safe, remained to show that a man called Tagliaferro, known to very few as a 'combat wizard' to disguise his paranormal abilities, had ever been associated with the Agency. The file would remain buried in the archives and likely destroyed at some point. It was safer that way.
The story continues in Wizard at Work and Talent. Both are available through Amazon’s Kindle books. A fourth book, Veil of Time, is underway. It should be available in the Kindle store by early summer, 2015.
Excerpt, Darwin’s World
Prologue
I drifted from sleep to drowsiness.
I was confused. I had been in the hospital, waiting to die, but this room was not what I remembered. Had I been moved? My thoughts weren't clear.
These walls were plain white, not what I remembered. I didn’t wonder at the discrepancy for long. There was an open door to the side of my bed and I could make out bathroom fixtures in the adjoining room.
I was still half-asleep, but I felt the familiar morning urge. There was a coverlet of some sort over me, so I pulled it aside and got up, stumbling on my way into the bathroom. I used the toilet, cleaned myself, and flushed. I still felt groggy, even after washing my hands and face; I couldn’t still be asleep, could I? But if I was awake, how could I be walking?
Paramedics had brought me in on a stretcher, suffering from a variety of age-related diseases, but now I felt none of the symptoms that had plagued my last few years; walking into the bathroom had been easy, no distress, no pain.
The bathroom was simple. The walls were white, though not glaringly so. There was the toilet I'd used, a basin with a towel, also used now, and a shower enclosure with a larger towel. Since I could now apparently walk again without discomfort, I stepped into the shower. As soon as I was inside, warm water sprayed gently over my skin.
A recessed shelf held soap and shampoo, so I washed my hair and bathed. I noticed while shampooing that my hair was short and quite thick. My arms were now faintly hairy and the hairs were dark, as was the small patch on my upper chest. Even more strangeness; I didn’t remember being like this. My hair had been sparse and gray, hadn’t it?
Something had happened but it didn’t seem important. Perhaps I was still dreaming.
I saw no controls for the shower, but when I stepped out onto a mat, the water flow behind me stopped. I toweled myself dry, hung the towel over the shower enclosure, and returned to the room where I’d awakened.
If I was dreaming, this was the best dream I'd had in years.
The bed had been made in my absence. One wall now looked out on a tranquil forest scene. Beside the wall stood a figure, watching me. There was a chair so I sat down.
“Your name is Matt,” the figure said, and I remembered that it was so. That much hadn't changed.
“Okay, my name is Matt, but I don't remember coming here. The last thing I remember was the paramedics wheeling me into the hospital. This doesn't look like any hospital I've ever seen. I would remember."
“This is phase one of your awakening,” the man said. “You will be here for some time while we complete your transformation. Don’t expect to understand everything immediately. You will know more next time we wake you.”
Curious; perhaps this wasn’t a dream after all.
"How did I ge
t here? And why don't I feel like I did before?"
“We took you away from the time you were born in. In that time, you would have died. Your body had begun to break down from the changes that time brings. We recognized the onset of the lethal changes, stabilized your condition, then took you from the hospital, keeping you alive until more advanced medical treatments could begin. As soon as your condition permitted, we brought you from your time to ours.”
My fragmented memories of the hospital were vague and incomplete. Despite the mention of dying, it didn’t seem to matter. I didn’t understand any of the things he'd said, but I wasn’t worried. Had the man given me some sort of tranquilizer?
He continued, “You have been harvested from your time, provided appropriate medical care, and we will now complete your transformation. The process will take some time but you will not recall what happens.
"Some of the procedures are painful. We induce unconsciousness to spare you the pain. When the transformation is nearly complete, you will receive training, and when the process is finished, you will be transplanted to a different timeline. I will explain more when you wake up next time.
"You will alternate between sleep and wakefulness as we process you. I understand that you will have questions and I will answer such of them as we consider meaningful.”
“How long will I be asleep this time?” For some reason, that seemed important to me.
“As long as necessary,” he replied.
I was drowsy again and I thought I might want to ask another question, but he disappeared even as I drifted into sleep.