F Paul Wilson - Novel 05

by Mirage (v2. 1)

  You're in a closet, and the lights are out. Or you're sealed in a cave, buried alive. Dark like a womb, but absent its warmth. Maybe a glitch in the satellite link: no visuals, no sound— nothing.

  You should pull out and contact Dr. Siegal.

  And then you notice the sparks. Tiny dull pinpricks of light out there, ahead somewhere. Are they close enough for you to touch or are they on the other end of the universe? There's no way for you to tell. No scale here, no way to gauge distance.

  You lick your lips.

  The wetness is a reassuringly real sensation.

  You reach out and see your smooth, realistic virtual hand as it magically draws you on. If you had feet you'd be stumbling about like a blind man on an obstacle course. But you glide like an angel through the haze of smoke and fog. Somewhere above—far above—you see a faint blob of light, a moon of sorts, or a moribund sun, but it adds no worthwhile illumination to this scorched wasteland.

  The other lights seem closer, or at least they've grown larger. As your eyes adjust to the cavelike darkness, you begin to see.

  The tiny lights sputter like small fires dotting a bomb site. You make out twisted shapes, indeterminate structures like bombed-out buildings catching the faint glow. You turn left to see how far this, this . .. devastation goes. And it's everywhere, as far as you can see....

  Everywhere. You pull back your hand—and pause.

  "My God!"

  Your own voice startles you. It's the only sound you've heard since you entered this borderland of hell.

  You search for something to compare it to. Hiroshima. Dresden after the fire. Yet even in those horrors, people survived, life struggled out of the rubble. But here, nothing is moving here.

  And so intensely lonely, so unrelievedly bleak; a knot tightens in your chest. You want to leave. This is nothing like what you imagined you'd see. Yes, you want to leave, if for no other reason than to make sure that you can leave. You want to rip off the headset and scream for light: Give me some light!

  But you calm yourself. You know this is merely a memoryscape, as harmless as Lorraine's, with the same underlying architecture: neural links connecting the memory nodes. Somewhere below, Sam's neural pathways weave and interconnect, linking events and experiences along the pathways that used to carry Sam's emotions and feelings and information to her consciousness.

  But you see nothing moving here.

  You've entered the land of the dead.

  Suddenly the Window button begins to blink. You click it. The window drops down and there's Dr. Siegal. He looks frazzled.

  "Julie! Julie, get out of there!"

  ''Why?" You know damn well why, but vou want to hear someone else tell you.

  "The devastation. It's—it's unimaginable. And it can't help affecting you as well."

  "You don't know that."

  "I don't want to argue, Julie.. This is far worse than either of us expected in our worst nightmares. Get out, Julie. Get out now!"

  You're ready to agree, ready to click the Exit button and return to the real world of warmth and light and life, when you notice a blue glow somewhere near the center of the twisted structures that dot the memoryscape. A pale blue light, cool fire, small, flickering, like a pilot light on a stove.

  "In a minute," you tell Dr. S. "There's something I want to check out first."

  "Me, please—"

  You click the Window button and Dr. Siegal disappears.

  You take a breath and reach out your hand. The glove feels heavy. The act is a decisive one. The hand drags you toward the blue glow, drifting over the razed nodes. You trace the gopher-trail connections leading from one structure to the next. Most look broken, shattered here and there along their lengths like ruptured water mains.

  You look down at them, expecting to see something scurry out, some ratlike creature that can thrive among these ruins.

  If you had arms you'd rub them to drive off the chill.. . .

  Chill? Why are you chilled? Certainly not from Sam's memoryscape. You can't feel anything in a memoryscape—you can only observe it. Probably an emotional response to the desolation. Or perhaps someone left a door open in the nursing home and cool air is seeping into Sam's room. But no sensations from the memoryscape itself. That simply can't be.

  Your eyes are fully adjusted to the darkness now, and you see dimly glowing mounds dotting the ruined horizon. They shine with a warmer light than the blue glow before you, almost inviting.

  Memory nodes maybe? Is there still life in this place?

  You look ahead and now you're close to the blue glow. This doesn't resemble a bombed-out building. No Eiffel Tower here, no house with a picket fence. Just this cool blue sphere.

  You pull back for a moment and watch the blue orb. You've seen nothing else like it in this barren landscape. If you're to learn anything here, perhaps this is where you must begin.

  You raise the glove and it looks as if your hand is reaching out to touch the blue sphere, perhaps to grasp it.

  You begin falling into it, the blue light ready to swallow you.

  Too late to pull back. An instant of panic, of featureless cold blue fire. You hear a noise. A door opening, the jangle of keys, and then the blue light is gone and you're in a room.

  In an art studio.

  Sam's studio. You were here last week. You look around. The floor is clean. Samantha's bureau is intact, the drawers all closed. The studio looks unrealistically neat. No sign of anyone breaking in. Nothing like what you saw then.

  You turn to your left and see the paintings. One canvas is all slashing blue and black streaks, a violent piece of work, similar to the one you saw in the real-world studio. You raise your hand to it and you're closer.

  The paint glows. It looks like alien lava dripping off the canvas. The painting is changing before your eyes. It seems alive. Is Sam's unconscious trying to finish the work? Or trying to destroy it?

  You wait, but nothing intelligible emerges from the swirling streaks.

  You turn farther left. There's a delay, as if your command to look left has to be processed. Which of course it does. Another painting leans against the wall but this looks like one of the old masters, a Brueghel. Villagers at harvest time. Women in their starched linens, men in baggy trousers with sheaves of wheat strapped on their shoulders.

  You know you're in Sam's studio, her workplace. And yet here is a painting that's clearly not hers. Or perhaps it is; perhaps one she painted and sold during all those years you barely spoke. There could be hundreds of those.

  And this one moves too. You look in the upper right corner and see a tiny red demon with a pitchfork. The demon moves closer to the villagers. He carries his pitchfork with determination, with purpose.

  The demon pounces upon a villager and spears the hapless man with a vicious jab. The bumpkin writhes on the end of the fork as a fiery pit opens in the sward and he's tossed into the flames.

  "No!"

  Your own voice startles you again, not because it pierces the silence, but because of the sudden surge of horror that forced you to cry out. Why should this crudely animated image disturb you so? It's not even a real painting.

  And yet, as you watch the poor man tumble backward into hellfire, you want to reach for him, help him, and it breaks your heart that you can't.

  He vanishes, and then...

  It starts all over. Like a loop, the painting is back the way it was, the happy villagers, the demon up in the right, beginning his grim resolute march.

  You pull back, turn away, searching out the other paintings in this studio, anything but that one.

  You find a large canvas hanging way to the left where the walls of this studio come together in a V, an impossibly sharp corner. The large canvas is empty.

  But no, you must have missed it. A moon hangs in the upper right corner of the canvas, a nearly full moon floating near the top of the canvas. A yellow, sleepy moon ...

  You think: sleepy moon. And that means something to you. Sleepy moon
.

  This canvas, too, is disturbing. Sleepy moon. Why does that seem important?

  How long have you been in here?

  You hear something behind you. A crackling sound. Some-thing that sounds like a fireplace. Shakily, warily, you raise your hand, the disembodied appendage that stands in for the rest of your body. You make it glide right.

  Another canvas. A lion with a mane of fire stands proudly in an elegant Venetian gondola painted red and gold along its railing. The fiery head sizzles and crackles as it bums. Your fingers reach toward the painting and you drift closer. Is this one of Sam's, another work completed and sold in the lost years between you?

  You turn around.

  Something on the floor, standing out amid the immense empty expanse of virtual wood.

  A palette knife, still thick with crusty blue paint, as if it had been dropped in die rush of the moment.

  Move closer to it, gliding soundlessly as if you are the ghost, and not all these images. Reach down. There's no dexterity involved in picking up the knife. The program fills in the appropriate gestures, linking the objects. Your virtual hand closes on the palette knife, tidying the room by picking up this lone stray object.

  You hold it, wondering why Sam dropped it. And it was dropped. You sense that.

  A door slams behind you, startling you. It sounds like a gunshot in this dead place and you almost cry out. Someone laughs drunkenly. You turn around.

  And see your sister.

  Then—you are your sister, speaking:

  "They told me bad things about you...."

  Samantha watches Liam enter her studio, catlike, looking around, nervous and unsure. His longish, wavy red hair is tucked behind his ears; his sharp, quick, bright eyes dart here and there. This is unknown terrain, an alien world for him. Sam finds his disorientation amusing.

  A few feet into the studio, he stops.

  "Isn't this room a wee bit dark for a studio?" he says.

  She smiles and leans against the wall. Liam is just a dark shape in her apartment. How old is he, thirty? Thirty-five? Hard to tell. He has deep lines cut into his face. A weathered face. Sam imagines that it is a face cut by pain.

  She enjoys the feelings she now has, the fear mixed with excitement—

  "I have skylights. 1 can make it very cheery during the day. If I want to, that is. If ever I want the place 'cheery.'"

  She kicks the door shut.

  The sound echoes in the room. Sam reaches out and touches Liam's broad shoulder. He turns to her.

  "I didn't bring you here to see my studio," she says.

  His grin flashes back at her in the darkness.

  "Didn't you now?"

  And then he comes close, pressing Samantha to the wall, pushing her tight, snug against the rough boards. His lips cover hers and slowly, deliberately, he moves against her.

  She moans into his mouth, and the sound is a trigger.

  She feels his hands on her, strong hands traveling up her body, over her hips, her breasts, up to her neck, when—

  You see nothing. Your sister, the man—gone. Both vanished like ghosts.

  What just happened here? Somehow you slipped into the memory. No, slipped isn't the word. You were ripped from your observer status and hurtled headlong into participation. You felt his lips on yours, his hands moving over your—

  Christ, you felt things. You can't let Dr. Siegal know.

  How did this happen? It's not supposed to happen. It can't happen. Unless ...

  Dr. Siegal's warning comes back to you: You share not only a history, but an identical set of genes as well. That's an unpredictable and possibly dangerous combination.

  Well, he was right about the unpredictable. Hopefully he was wrong about the dangerous part.

  But what happened to the rest of the scene?

  Did something make it end? Was that the event that triggered Sam's comatose state. So many questions...

  You glance again at the black-and-blue painting-—or what used to be the painting. The canvas is blank, the pigment puddled on the floor, the painting gone.

  Which means this dead memoryscape has changed—at least this part of it. And not necessarily for the better.

  You have a thought: If things are changing in here, could something be changing outside? Are you helping or hurting in here? Mostly it seems like you're stumbling around.

  You have no idea of time. But before you leave you want another look outside. Maybe you could catch the rest of Sam's memory with Liam. Idle curiosity? Careful, this is a high-order invasion of privacy.

  And for the first time the possibility of witnessing what happened to Sam—what was done to her—frightens you. Can you stand to see it?

  You turn and move to the studio door. You glide back into the night world of the memoryscape. It all looks pretty much the same: the ruptured axons, the twisted structures at the nodes, like violent modern sculptures. Nothing has changed here—or has it? You can't be sure, but it strikes you that there might be fewer glowing mounds on the horizon.

  You see a not-so-distant node lit by a warm glow instead of the faint sputtering light of the others. You glide toward it. Along the way you think you see someone standing below. You approach cautiously. For an instant you think it's Sam and then you realize that it's only a doll made to look like Sam—a very dumpy doll of Sam. Actually, it looks like Sam's image painted on a giant, five-foot gourd. Like one of those toy boxing dummies.

  You touch it with the glove icon and it begins rocking back and forth. And as it rocks it splits around the middle. The top half pops off and there's another doll inside, only this one looks like you. You realize it's a giant matrioshka doll, one doll nesting inside another. Sam loved these as a little girl. The matrioshka—open it up and there's a smaller doll inside. Open that and there's another one, and on and on until you get to the center, where the tiniest doll lives, the last doll that can't be opened.

  The last doll, the one with no secrets.

  You touch the new doll and that one splits, too, popping its top half off to reveal another Sam, identical to the first except one-third the size. You touch this one but nothing happens. That's it. No more dolls.

  Sam, Julie, Sam. Why? Is it supposed to mean something? Or is it just... here?

  Baffled, you move on, leaving the little Sam doll sitting in the lower half of the Julie doll, sitting in the lower half of the Sam doll, rocking back and forth, rocking....

  You reach the glow and see an enormous house, a squat and monstrously large estate. A mammoth stone dollhouse sitting in the war zone of Sam's memory. It almost looks like Eathan's Yorkshire manor, Oakwood, but it's impossibly large, larger even than Versailles, stretching for thousands of yards.

  And yet this could still be Eathan's manor. It's only Sam's memory, after all, and if it's a childhood memory, size and scale mean absolutely nothing. The house would be impossibly huge.

  You're closer, and the front doors to the mansion do look familiar, the dark oak with cut glass veiled by a heavy curtain. You reach out for the giant brass doorknob and fee! like Alice in Wonderland, the scale is that exploded. Surely you'll find oversized chairs inside, massive mirrors, and a plate of cookies with a card that says Eat me.

  You expect the doorknob to be locked, but it turns with a silkily smooth action. The twin oaken doors glide open.

  And you see a little girl. You know her. She's you—or she's Sam. Always a challenge for people to tell you apart; even you have difficulty in some of the old pictures.

  But then the little girl raises something in her hands. A statue. A Greek-looking figure standing on a base.

  You remember this. You remember the day little Sammi threw the—

  The statue smashes onto the marble steps, and shatters into a hundred pieces. The pieces quickly melt like chunks of ice on a hot skillet.

  And Sammi screams: "I hate you! You ruin everything! You're stupid, Julie!"

  Then you see yourself, racing up the stairs, chasing Sammi.


  But why aren't you in Samantha like before? Is it because the younger you is here as well? Does that keep you out?

  So much to learn here.

  You follow, chasing your young self. You remember this day too well, remember the rage. You hear yourself yelling at Sammi, a cold, bloodthirsty sound: "I'm going to kill you."

  But something's different. You remember this, and yet you don't. Why so angry? That wasn't your statue she broke. Why should you even care?

  Up the staircase, not floating now, but pounding up the heavily carpeted steps. But when you reach the top—no one there. The second-floor hallway stretches right and left; like train tracks, the hallway seems to stretch forever.

  You hear banging. A steady, thumping noise. You follow little Julie to the right, moving past doors and paintings and tables with flowers on them. You'd like to look at the paintings. They may be important. But the thumping draws you on, to a looming closet door.

  You stop and hear the banging, the terrible pounding against the door. It can't be a little girl making all that noise.

  You know what happens next.

  You remember.

  Little Julie stands outside the hall-closet door. She hears yelling coming from the other side, the dark, locked-in side.

  "Let me out, Julie. Let me out! I don't like it in here!"

  The little you moves closer to the door.

  "Then I guess you shouldn't have hid in there, brat."

  "Julie!"

  Naked terror in that voice. Panic at being locked in some-place dark and strange. The feeling of being trapped.

  You watch little Julie turn and walk away.

  The scene happens again. Then again and again, a loop, the little girl turning away from her pleading sister.

  "Julieeeeeee!"

  A light begins flashing.

  The warning light in the readout ribbon. You check the vital signs—pulse, respirations, EKG, EEG—all normal. The built-in time limit is up. So soon? Damn. There's so much more to see. What happened to Sam and Liam? Are there any further changes in the memoryscape? What are these paintings on the wall? What secrets do the hundred rooms of this fantasy house hold?

  You don't want to leave, but staying past the limit might be damaging to you and your twin. Your brain waves are linked, more intimately than you or Dr. Siegal ever could have imagined. So you will leave the way you came: through the door. You want one last look at Sam's memoryscape.