The Hallucigenia Project

by Darren Kasenkow

  Rodney smoothed the edges of his shirt and turned away from the window. “Regression to memories suggests neural manipulation on a level we never knew existed, and it means that something in those electronics can steer consciousness. We’re heading into completely uncharted waters and even one of the greatest scientists I’ve ever come across, David Bohm, suggested that there was nothing we could observe in matter that could bring any true understanding of what it is to be conscious. So we have to keep going in and try to build a map of the terrain, because whatever we’re look for is going to be found deep in the mind and not under a microscope.”

  “Here’s the thing,” Candice said as she scrubbed at the red on her fingers. “We’re sending people into god knows where to experience god only knows what and yet we seem to be avoiding the big question in the room.”

  “And what question is that?”

  “The question of where the code and instructions came from.”

  “You already know the answer to that,” Rodney offered while appearing to become slightly uncomfortable.

  “No,” Candice reminded him, “I don’t. I know where we found it, but I’m talking about how it got there… or who put it there. This is no accident.”

  “You honestly think that anyone working on this project isn’t kept awake wondering the same thing? Of course we want to know, but it’s not the kind of answer that will fall out of the sky just because a room full of smart people think about it. We’re not talking about a solution to a math problem or software limitations, we’re talking about digital instructions hidden in our genetic code, and unless you studied under knowledge that can point otherwise, we still don’t even understand how our code came to be let alone an additional set of instructions directly designed for technology, so asking how, why or who is a waste of time right now. All we need to worry about is what it is.”

  She knew he was right, but it hardly made the situation any easier. The startling fact was that the instructions had been discovered wrapped hidden deep within the twisted DNA molecules that gave the planet human beings, and with the discovery came the sudden realisation that life may not have originated from a random event. And if that was the case, the world would have to rethink everything it had ever believed or known.

  “Okay,” she sighed, “that’s fair enough I guess, but what about you? Where do you think it’s come from?”

  “I had a feeling that was coming next.” Rodney clasped his hands together and considered her question for a minute or so. “From a scientific standpoint I suspect the code could still prove to be a sign that nature is far more complicated than we could have ever imagined.”

  “That doesn’t explain the message though.”

  “No, it probably doesn’t. My personal view though? Some form of intelligence has inserted the information into our blood. Considering I’ve never believed in any sort of God, it could be that the stars are not as silent as they seem.”

  Candice absorbed his answer as the last of the red on her fingers was wiped away. “We’ve been sent a warning Rodney, and it’s not the kind of warning anyone here on Earth could anticipate.”

  “We don’t know anything for certain yet.”

  “Yes we do,” she said firmly, “we know the message and the lines of code are there, that’s the cold hard reality. Someone or something has put it there for us to find. Now you and I both know that Hendrix discovered something and there’s no guarantee we’ll find him again, which means we need to find whatever he did because I think he knows who put it there. If things keep happening like they did,” she pointed through the glass, “we might have to face up to the possibility we’re ignoring another warning, and considering it all comes from the same source maybe we should start putting a lot more focus on the who instead of the what.”

  “Look,” Rodney responded with a touch of resignation, “we’ve got three separate teams working on finding the information we think Hendrix stumbled onto. We’ve got our deepest satellites pointed at the orbital path that matches the co-ordinates in the code ready to let us know as soon as anything appears, and we’re preparing shelters to make it through the impact. Things are happening, believe me. Now regardless of where the instructions came from the fact is that those instructions created this device, and it’s our job to find out what it does. If we can do that, we just might arrive at another piece of this puzzle.”

  “And a few more dead bodies,” Candice said sarcastically.

  “You’re probably right, there will be more bodies for the morgue downstairs, but regardless of the kind of person they were at least if they die in there,” he said while pointing at the glass, “at least it’ll be doing something that is part of a higher purpose. Think about it, compared to most of the people in the city they just might the lucky ones.”

  Candice could feel the exhaustion closing in and the backs of her legs beginning to ache. A sense of claustrophobia was also beginning to creep in and now more than ever she wanted to go home, crawl into the shower and then collapse onto the sofa with a stiff drink to wash away the blood of a man who liked little girls.

  “I don’t know if I’ve got another one in me Rodney,” she said. “Hell, I don’t even know if the sun’s up or down out there and I haven’t eaten in hours.”

  “If it makes you feel any better I haven’t left this damn place in four days so I know where you’re coming from, but you and I both know we can hardly afford the luxury of time away from the lab.”

  “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but I’ve got someone else’s blood splattered all over me, and if I go another hour or two without food I’ll lose my fucking mind. You’ve gotta cut me a break here.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” he offered with a touch of annoyance, “let’s try one more session and then head home until tomorrow morning. This time it’s an old lady looking at another six years of a life sentence for killing her husband, and now that’s she found out she has cancer she’s willing to do anything for a chance to spend her last days on the outside. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about this one.”

  Delayed rage was slowly beginning to boil over for Candice, the sudden appearance of the emotion catching even her off guard. She had no doubt a child sex predator ripping himself open in front of her was fuelling the growing fire, but it was hardly dancing alone when it came to cause.

  “I think I’m about to snap,” she stammered with a sharp tongue. “If this shit storm becomes a reality, and we’ve got no reason to assume otherwise, then maybe, just maybe, mopping blood off the floors all the way down here is just an exercise in futility. We’re not getting anywhere Rodney. The subjects are experiencing something but we’re not any closer to knowing just what, and I don’t know if I can do it again.” She cast her eyes to the floor and shook her head. “It’s like the deeper we go the less we know, and I’m really struggling to find a good reason to risk another arterial spray. The end is coming, and we might have to face up to the fact that we’ll never know what this device is for.”

  If Rodney was unhappy with the revelation he wasn’t showing it, his face displaying no emotion as he continued to smooth the edge of his shirt. For a while they both just sat there still and quiet as though punishment would fall upon the next person to talk, but it soon became obvious to Rodney that if he didn’t say anything the silence would slowly become unbearable. He was also certain that Candice was close to walking away from the task at hand, and that wouldn’t be good at all.

  “I had a feeling it would come to this,” he sighed.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Candice asked, lifting her eyes back off of the floor.

  “It means the time’s come to expand your knowledge a little.” Rodney offered a quaint smile as he gathered his thoughts. “None of this is easy, you don’t need me to tell you that, but don’t think for a second any of it is futile, even if our worst fears are almost a certainty. Doing what you do and working for who you work for, besides the people higher up you know more than just abo
ut anyone else in the world. But… you don’t know everything.”

  Candice could tell he wasn’t trying to be spiteful or disrespectful, she knew when he got angry his left eye would twitch and mouth would remain partly open, and found herself leaning forward on the chair hoping for clarity on the strange statement.

  “Telling you this could get us all kicked out,” he continued, “so this conversation never took place.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The code hidden in the DNA was a set of binary instructions, that much you know. When we unravelled the sequence and entered it into a processor it gave the blue print for the device and an approximate date of a multi asteroid impact.” He hesitated for a second as though unsure of what to say next. “What you don’t know, what you’re not supposed to know, is that there was a third message.”

  “You have to be fucking kidding me…”

  “I’m deadly serious.”

  “Well then you need to tell me. Considering I could’ve been killed in there today, it’s the least you can do.”

  Rodney quietly moved his head in agreement. “I don’t know a lot of the details but, if we’re going to believe the message that appeared after entering the code, asteroids won’t be the only visitors from out in the void.” His hands began to squeeze the edges of the chair. “Something will be locking itself into Earth’s orbit, a craft of some kind from what I’ve been told. From what they’ve managed to decipher it will happen within forty eight hours from impact, but don’t ask me for any more details because I just don’t know.” He pointed through the window where the remnants of death had almost vanished. “What we can almost be sure of though is that whatever this device is, whatever its purpose could be, must have something to do with the post impact arrival, and that makes our work more important than we could have imagined.”

  Candice felt her mouth open but nothing came out. The shock of what Rodney had just told her was sending tremors deep into the recesses of her mind, leaving her thoughts rattled, shaken and struggling to grip onto anything that resembled a familiar reality. It had already taken all of her scientific fortitude and countless sweat drenched nightmares to come to terms with the binary code in the DNA and the horrific warning it carried about imminent destruction, so how could she possibly process yet another twist to the apocalyptic play?

  Somehow, even with a mouth quickly turning clammy and dry, she found her voice. “The only thing that’s kept me from losing my mind through all this is a tiny belief that maybe, just maybe, our science books have been wrong about the history of life here on Earth, that maybe this is a second round for us humans.”

  “And I promise you, you’re not alone. This is completely unknown territory, a discovery to end all discoveries, and the only thing we can do is try to apply some sort of analytical logic to something that makes no sense.”

  “We measure our species in thousands of years,” Candice said shaking her head, “on a planet billions of years old. Time like that, it’s impossible to comprehend, and we can’t know for sure what’s been buried at the shores of eternity. As a scientist it’s hard to ignore all that we’ve learned, but I can’t ignore the possibility that back in a time we’ll never know we developed advanced technologies.” She looked at Rodney with an expression of awe and trepidation. “What if we placed the instructions in our DNA before being wiped out by an impact from the same orbital projection?”

  “If you had asked me that question six months ago I would have arranged for your escort out of the building, but now? Now I don’t know what to think, and a hidden arrival schedule for god knows what from god knows where isn’t making anything any easier.”

  “If that’s what they found, instead of a visit, we might be hosting a home coming… if any of us even survive.”

  A tension filled silence emerged as Candice suddenly felt the weight of concrete that separated them from ground level bearing down. The urge to march past Rodney without uttering another word and rush up through the floors to the city streets was tantalizingly strong, but she knew it was a futile fantasy. There was nowhere to run that would strip away the knowledge that left her mind in fractured pieces and heart smothered with a squeezing anxiety.

  Rodney slapped a hand against his thigh as if to indicate that the discussion was over and lifted himself from the chair. There was regret etched into his youthful features but also resignation.

  “Remember,” he said, “this conversation didn’t happen.”

  “For a conversation that didn’t happen I’m going to have a hard time forgetting it.”

  “It’s not a matter of forgetting, it’s a matter of compartmentalizing. Think about it too much and you’ll be rocking in the corner before you know it, so right now the only important thing is prepping the system for the next subject.”

  “Speaking of prepping,” Candice mumbled as she threw a solemn glance at the window, “you might want to tell the cleaners not to worry about packing up.” She peered at Rodney with a steeled and cold reflection. “With the things happening in there I’m not sure I feel like a scientist anymore. It’s like I’m becoming a witness, a bridge between this world and whatever waits on the other side.”

  Rodney already had his hand by the scanner ready to make an exit. “It’s easy to forget that science is all about understanding life, and that means sooner or later we’ll have to come face to face with death.” He shrugged his shoulders and turned to the door as the lock clinked open. “Anybody who says there’s a beauty to be found in the act of dying is lying, and there’s nothing beautiful about what’s coming.”

  Then he was gone, and all Candice could do was to wait for the numbness to creep along her nerves and wash across her skin so that she could be ready to smile and guide the new subject into an unknown realm accessed by a device, built from ancient instructions coiled within the human genome and its more than three billion DNA bases, that had a strange knack of inspiring the wearer to rip themselves apart. Now, to add fuel to the fire that had already singed and burned her state of mind, there was the sudden addition of some form of intelligence making its way to the third blue planet from the sun. Maybe, she couldn’t help thinking, the attraction to death that she was fast becoming a witness to was a longing to simply… no longer think. Without thought, there could be no pain.

  A quick check of the security monitor assured her that the hallway was empty for the moment, so she stepped up to a metal cabinet positioned against the wall and quickly tore off her clothes before throwing them into a plastic bag and hurling it into the corner. From the top drawer she removed a plastic container filled with sterile pads and frantically wiped down every inch of her skin as the stinging scent of ethanol burned the inside of her nose. Naked and scrubbing away blood in her office should have been an obvious trigger to reconsider what the hell she was doing in an underground secret government fortress, but considering this was the third time she’d been forced to degrade herself by cleaning her body like some sort of homeless vagrant, the trigger had become quiet. As a consolation prize, she at least had the cleaning process down to an art now.

  In the bottom drawer was a sports bag holding spare clothes. Still somewhat shaken from Rodney’s bombshell and knowing the security team would be there any minute with the new subject, she decided what she would do once the session was over. There were probably a thousand reasons not to, and almost definitely more important things to attend to, but for the first time in so very long she had enjoyed the tiniest chance to shut away all that was boiling in her brain and feel like a normal, red blooded woman. It had been brief, and there was every chance that she was completely wrong in her perceptions, but that didn’t matter. Any day now the world would never be the same again, and that kind of left her in a position with nothing to lose. So now that she had something to focus on, something to fragment her thoughts and hold onto once the madness returned, Candice slipped into a creased jacket and prepared for the arrival.

  Chapter 23

  John s
taggered into the hotel and dumped the bag of tourist treasure onto the small dining table as Vanessa scooped up Bobbie and nuzzled her nose against his cheeks. Through the windows the last of the crimson tinged evening light had turned dark, broken only by the expanding glow of the city.

  For most of the day, which had begun when John had peeled himself from the sheets with an invisible vice squeezing his skull, they had explored various attractions as though they belonged to the thousands of tourists that bustled for new experiences and small adventures. The science museum might have been a little more interesting if his hangover wasn’t reaching a crescendo, and the brief visit to one of the aquariums had brought back childhood memories of pressing his face against enormous tanks to stare wide eyed at slow gliding sharks, but it was Little Havana that had finally managed to lift his spirits a little and clear his head. The coffee had been bitter and strong, the music energetic and carefree, and Vanessa’s beaming smile at the chance to play host reminded him that, sometimes at least, there were good things to be found in the world.

  Her smile had been delayed though thanks to his telling of the limousine party from the night before, and he could only have imagined her response if he’d kept talking and revealed the insanity of what had taken place in the underground bunker. He hadn’t though, and by the time the heat of the day had reached its zenith and Cuban music and coffee had lightened the mood they had cruised tacky tourist shops, laughing and joking as they searched for the perfect Hawaiian shirt and matching baseball cap.

  The absolute truth was that he had fun, filling his bag with badly designed shirts and even a tacky sea shell necklace, and now back in the hotel he was still wearing the cap that was adorned with a sparkling hot pink outline of a woman against a palm tree and rolling wave. It hadn’t been his choice but, as he caught his reflection in the window while drawing the curtains closed, decided that considering his adventure so far it was perfect.

  “So I’ve been thinking,” Vanessa said while collapsing onto the sofa with Bobbie snuggled against her chest, “maybe you should both crash over my place till, you know, you’re ready to head home. Staying here just doesn’t seem like a good idea anymore.”