The Hallucigenia Project

by Darren Kasenkow

  “Honey I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone put it so beautifully,” Vanessa said while glancing into the rear view mirror.

  “I thought so too when they told me.”

  “They?”

  “The star people. If you listen hard enough they’ll tell you as well.”

  “Well I can’t say I know no star people,” Vanessa assured her, “but if they’re friends of yours they must be okay.”

  “They’re your friends too,” Talitha laughed as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  “Heads up!” Joey’s voice crackled from the roof. “Looks like the law wants in on this party.”

  Vanessa pushed down on the red button once again. “How many?”

  “Just the one cruiser, but it’s moving pretty quick. Another thirty seconds or so and things will become intimate.”

  “We’re not picking up anything on the radio,” Klementina confirmed, “and we’ve only just hit the road so it’s probably a standard patrol. Let’s watch our speeds and don’t go drawing attention to ourselves.”

  “Copy that,” Vanessa added as John carefully used his mirror to check the traffic behind them.

  At first he wondered if Joey was seeing things, but when a large four by four switched lanes the black and white of the highway patrol came into view. And Joey was right, it did seem to be moving fast even though the roof top lights remained dormant. More than likely it was just a standard cruiser with a bored cop behind the wheel, but that didn’t stop the tension that was suddenly gaining traction with every second.

  “Okay Talitha,” John said slowly, “it’s really important we all just sit tight until the police go past.”

  “I won’t move a muscle,” she replied with more than a little concern.

  “Everything’s gonna be just fine,” Vanessa assured her passengers.

  Not wanting to physically turn his head John used the door controls to adjust the side mirror. The car was close enough now that he could see that the cop behind the wheel was alone, with his head facing straight forward and one arm leaning on the edge of the door frame. For the moment he maintained a straight ahead stare.

  “If they found us this quickly they must have known our movements,” John thought out loud, “and if they knew our movements it would’ve made a whole lot more sense to say hello back at the gas station, so I think this is a case of dumb luck that and shouldn’t give us any trouble.”

  The patrol car was level with them now. Thanks to highly tinted windows and nothing but darkness in the back of the van there was no real way of seeing past the two front seats, but that didn’t dampen the sense of exposure as the cop casually looked to his left and stared straight into John’s eyes. There was no emotion, no indication of what he might be thinking or why he chose to look through their windows in the first place, but if it was nothing more than a casual glance he sure was dragging it out.

  “That’s one curious officer of the law,” Vanessa said.

  John pretended to adjust the air conditioning and then leaned back while watching the cop from the corner of his eyes. He was still looking at them though shaped features that gave away his relative youth remained neutral, and just before things became even more uncomfortable he began to accelerate past their little train and joined the traffic up ahead.

  “It was bound to happen sooner or later so at least it’s out of the way,” Joey said from behind.

  Vanessa shook her head with disappointment. “You’re assuming lightening doesn’t strike twice but the truth is lightening does whatever the hell it wants.”

  “Maybe if you’re walking around in a storm…”

  “If it happens again,” Aaron added, “I don’t think it’ll be just dumb luck.”

  “Jumping at shadows this early isn’t going do anyone any favours,” John declared. “And besides, he’s already moving on.”

  Slowly and surely a sense of calm began return. John adjusted the gun between his legs and checked the mirrors once more, finding nothing to raise further concern. The surrounding traffic was beginning to spread out a little and the sky continued to pulse with crimson reds, dark grey clouds and pockets of blue that seemed to blink down onto the road.

  His thoughts were going everywhere and nowhere, and turning to watch Vanessa he could only wonder what might be happening behind the cool as cucumber expression that studied the path ahead. Yeah, now that the cop had passed and disappeared into the horizon things had calmed a little and sure, the three cars were travelling just fine, but he couldn’t stop the nagging feeling that things were about to tumble over the edge into absolute chaos. There was also the sudden and strong sense of protection he felt for the little girl in the wheelchair.

  Until they reached their destination Talitha was under his care, and there was a part of him that wanted to ask Vanessa to let him drive. Maybe, though, it was better this way. Maybe having both hands at the ready was the smarter option. Hell, maybe everything would be just fine, and they’d deliver Talitha safe and sound so that he could head back to the city to hold Candice close and plan for the end of the world. One way or the other, he’d know soon enough.

  Chapter 30

  Candice had made the journey down countless times and yet today the elevator felt different somehow. This time it was as if she were descending into a distant dream that no longer belonged to her, and as the heat of the city streets fell away that dream revealed its face as a sneering, concrete tomb. Only this tomb, Candice was coming to understand, held secrets that went beyond mere life and death.

  When the door slid open the corridor was abuzz with movement. This was the floor that housed the offices of those who made the decisions or relayed them, and with her lab on the next floor down it wasn’t an area she bothered with too often. Looking straight ahead at the far end she could see the service elevator being loaded with boxes and electrical equipment by uniformed staff. Judging by the pace of work, even if the message in the dream was true somehow she might already be too late.

  Rodney’s office was several doors down on the left. There were a few curious glances thrown her way as she marched forward but none of the faces were familiar, and nobody seemed to pay much attention to the announcement that echoed from overhead speakers.

  “All personnel are to be reminded of final stage protocol. All electronic devices are to be retired at primary security checkpoints. Any remaining printed documents are to be scanned and destroyed immediately. Ensure all metal objects have been removed prior to exit scan. For security purposes please ensure clearance tags are visible at all times.”

  Candice ran her fingers along the laminated card hanging from her neck and stepped up to Rodney’s door. She tapped a small button on the edge of the steel frame and smiled weakly into the camera that was angled down towards her face. Working in a security sensitive government facility should have had her used to the indignity of constant scrutiny and relentless surveillance, yet the opposite was fast becoming true. She was sick to death with her every movement being captured and here she was once again smiling for the camera.

  “Open up Rodney,” she said loud enough to be heard above the sound of the recording beginning another loop.

  “You’re wasting your time,” a deep voice ushered from behind, causing Candice to spin on her sneakers to find a short, slightly overweight man holding an overflowing box of printed reports. “Rod’s already cleaned out his office.”

  “How long ago?” she asked urgently.

  “Can’t say for sure,” the man shrugged, “maybe a half hour or so. In case you haven’t noticed the final curtain’s sliding on down and pretty soon it’ll be lights out and don’t let the door knob hit you in the ass.”

  “That’s real helpful,” she replied sarcastically as he shrugged his shoulders once more and continued on down the corridor to the service elevator. For a second Candice was tempted to grab someone else to try for some useful information but decided there was no real point considering the unrolling chaos, an
d chose instead to take the elevator down to the next floor.

  This time when the door slid open there was only the flickering light of an empty hallway to greet her. If luck was on her side the equipment in her lab would still be sitting there untouched, and if she could push that luck just a little further there was the chance the network was still talking enough to allow a scan through the case files. She didn’t quite know what she was looking for, or what to do if she found it, but it was all a matter of winging it from here.

  A soft green laser ran across her hand as she pressed it against the glass and the locks whined with disengagement. Trepidation at stepping back into the clinical room that had witnessed sad and violent deaths brought a nervous breath to push against the back of her teeth. The bustling traffic and thick humid air seemed a million miles away, resulting in a promise that once back on the surface she would never again venture down a concrete tomb devoid of windows and scarred with the suffering of test subjects who had died for a cause that was just about as unclear as the day the experiments had begun.

  The door pushed open and she managed two steps before freezing on the spot. Hunched over the only working computer with fingers drumming on the desk, Rodney didn’t seem to realize he had company. She didn’t want to jump to any conclusions but it sure as hell looked like he was deleting a whole heap of case note folders.

  “What’s going on here Rodney?” she asked.

  “What the protocol expects to be done,” he answered with a slightly startled expression. “If you were here when you were supposed to be you wouldn’t need to ask.”

  “Well I’m here now so maybe it’s time we had a chat.”

  Rodney swung his chair around and looked at her with suspicion. “This building is hours away from being a ghost town so you’ve probably left the luxury of conversation a little too late.”

  “Jesus Rodney are you fucking serious right now? We’ve been working on this thing for months so just because the facility is being shut down doesn’t mean the simple act of talking goes with it.” Candice was surprised at the aggression that shot from her mouth. “A lot of blood’s been spilled on the other side of that window and I don’t think either of us want it to be for nothing.”

  The anger in her voice seemed to have worked because he stopped what he was doing and looked across the room with a sigh. Judging by the red of his eyes and deep crease marks across his forehead sleep was probably a distant memory.

  “I didn’t mean to snub you off,” he explained. “Everyone around here is on tender hooks, me included. Thanks to the breaches I’ve got project heads breathing down my neck and demanding answers I can’t give them, like why the system captured activity on the device after your subject was dragged away with a bullet hole. If you want to talk so badly then that’s probably a good place to start.”

  Candice was caught completely off guard. She could only guess that some sort of processor surge had filtered through to the cyber security team, though whether they could be sure it was her who had jacked in or not for the moment could only be approached with suspicion. As for the truth, maybe this was one of those times where honesty wasn’t the best policy.

  “Well if the powers that be know about the breaches they should also know data isn’t immune to corruption,” she said. “Whether or not someone did manage to jack in after your trigger happy team added another notch to their belts may just turn out to be the least of our problems.”

  “Here’s the thing Candice,” Rodney scowled, “when you look up to the left and shift your feet like that I know you’re lying.”

  “Is that a fact?” she snapped.

  “Not a fact, but eighty percent of the time it’s one hundred percent accurate.” He offered a slight smirk to try to soften the tone. “Nothing about any of this is easy and it’s only going to get harder from here. You’re standing there looking at me like I’m the enemy or something when we’re on the same damn side, so why don’t you be a scientist and tell me what you found.”

  Candice studied his tired eyes and wondered why apprehension bubbled deep in her blood. Maybe it was finding someone to blame for the ceremonies of death she had been forced to witness, or perhaps it was the feeling that her work rested on the border of failure and she assumed, probably unjustifiably, that he looked down at her because of it.

  Be a scientist.

  That’s what he’d said and it was conceivably an offhanded suggestion with not a small amount of truth, so with a soft bite at the bottom of her lip she eased into her chair, stared through the glass into the blood and water soaked room that still flickered beneath faulty lights, and proceeded to tell Rodney what had happened when she’d donned the device. Not everything of course, but enough to reveal that there was a presence that seemed to inhabit a world that bridged the mind with processor magic. The cryptic message of the bad blood she conveniently left out of the tale.

  If Rodney was shocked or surprised in any way he sure as hell wasn’t showing it. The only reaction Candice could see was the slightest rise of his eyebrows, but even then it only lasted a second or two. It was almost as if she had told him something he already knew.

  “We always suspected the state of mind would determine its effectiveness,” he stated quietly. “The subjects we used were all broken in their own way and the fact that you were able to go deep means there’s some sort of selective barrier in place. I don’t know how but Hendrix has an idea of how it works, and he’s using this Talitha as the face of the system. Something tells me the Hallucigenia Project has got the jump on us somehow, and we’re just about out of time to do anything about it.”

  “What exactly is it that you think we should be doing?”

  “Besides surviving? We need to establish control over the neural interface because someone or something seems to be on the way, and it’s important that if history is going to make the mother of all marks the moment isn’t ruined by a bunch of damaged cult members following the ramblings of a guy who, genius or not, betrayed not only this department but the whole government.” He nodded gently to emphasize the point he was about to make. “You’ve been inside, and you’ve studied the others that have tried. That means more than anyone else you understand that we’re on the edge of an abyss that’s either annihilation or a jump to the next phase of evolution. The bridge between mind and machine has the power to make life and death obsolete. Control the bridge and we become Icarus flying towards the burning sun of God, only with wings that even fire cannot burn.”

  Candice imagined burning red wings glowing against a darkened sky and stepped up from her chair to shuffle towards the glass wall. What was once part of her lab now left her with the impression of a vacant slaughter house, the bodies gone but the memories still left to drip along the walls.

  “I’m curious,” she said while remembering the blood scrawled message that had announced God knew her desires, “is there anything else about the hidden sequence that I don’t know, that maybe you’re not telling me?”

  “We’re employed by the government and are sitting in an underground facility that technically doesn’t exist, working on a project that tests everything we thought we knew, so I can only assume that’s a rhetorical question. If you want to try being a little more specific I might be able to address whatever concerns you’ve got.”

  “Then maybe I’ll narrow it down for you.” She smeared a finger across the glass and noticed it was cool to the touch. “The code in the DNA is in all of us as far as we know, but that’s not all is it? There’s a different batch of blood and locked inside is something real bad, so tell me Rodney, who’s working on this little surprise package?”

  Rodney clenched his jaw muscles and walked up to stand beside her. He too ran a finger along the glass but for him the vision on the other side failed to leave him imagining a slaughter house. As he spoke it was with barely hidden resignation.

  “Did I ever tell you what drove me to science?” he asked.

  “You’re my boss, and that kinda m
eans you keep most of the personal stuff close to your chest so no, you never told me.”

  “Funny how titles can mould a person, almost as if a mere word can infiltrate the character like a program that gets its hooks into everything.” His finger slowly caressed the surface and his eyes were aimed at the damaged computer on the other side, but Candice couldn’t be sure he was actually seeing anything. “When I was a kid my best friend in the world was Max. As far as Alsatians go he wasn’t overly big but to me, considering I still had to climb up into my bed he was a giant beast that shadowed me like a protector straight from the world of dinosaurs and dragons. My father was no nonsense and all authority, but he wouldn’t dream of laying a hand on me in anger whether I deserved it or not, because he knew Max would tear his arm off.”

  “Sounds like a loveable pooch.”

  “Oh he was a gentle giant most of the time, but he sure did like to show his teeth if he thought there was the threat of harm coming my way.” Rodney smiled at the rising memories. “Every night without fail he’d lie on the floor at the end of my bed and wouldn’t move until it was time for me to get up. I never really had a fear of the dark because there was no way monsters were getting anywhere near me, and every morning the first thing I did was run him to the park no matter what the weather was and threw sticks until it was time to get ready for school. It wasn’t the safest neighbourhood but everyone knew Max and me, hell he was pretty much a celebrity.”

  “So let me guess,” Candice said softly, “starting every day in a bit of nature got you thinking about how it works?”

  “To be honest the only interest I had in the trees was which branch I was going to rip off for him to chase, and I must’ve snapped off hundreds of the damned things. So no, a few trees and overgrown grass didn’t really interest me.” Now he dropped his arm and looked down to the floor. “One morning I woke up and sometime during the night Max had done something he’d never done before. He’d crawled up onto the bed and was lying across my chest. I remember being really surprised because even as a pup he preferred his blanket at the end of the bed. The alarm was buzzing and that was always the trigger for him to start bashing his tail all over the room ready for his run, but this time he wasn’t moving. When I rubbed his stomach to wake him up it was bloated and cold. Max wasn’t alive to keep away the monsters anymore.”