The Mirror Man

by Jane Gilmartin

  Chapter 28

  The eighth-floor conference room had been emptied of its furnishings, except for several chairs, which were arranged in a semicircle. Facing those were of a bank of cameras and bright lights mounted on metal stands. Jeremiah took his place in the center chair. Dr. Young took the seat on his left, Charles Scott, to his right and an FDA agent who introduced himself as Nathan Christopher sat next to Scott. Jeremiah didn’t recognize him, but that, he knew, meant nothing. For all he knew, the man might have been privy to the entire experiment. Three network news anchors sat on the other side of Dr. Young. There was no audience to witness the event, but a small number of ViMed executives and scientists stood in a quiet huddle in a far corner of the room, out of the camera shot. To his dismay, Jeremiah also saw two older men standing off to the other side of the room, both in what appeared to be full-dress army regalia. From the number of medals on them, they looked to be fairly high-ranking. He swallowed hard. They weren’t here to provide security, he knew. They were here to make sure no threats would need neutralizing.

  A balding producer who smelled heavily of cough syrup fastened a microphone to Jeremiah’s lapel and talked to him in clipped, hurried sentences.

  “Let the anchors set it up. They know what to do. When you speak, look at them and not at the camera. Be yourself. You’ll do fine.” He stood up and moved quickly out of the frame. “In three. Two. One,” he said.

  Charles Scott shot a severe glance at Jeremiah. There was no mistaking what he meant.

  The lead anchor, an impeccably dressed and angular man, began by introducing the participants, ending with a direct question to Jeremiah.

  “Are you nervous about taking the Meld today?”

  Jeremiah stammered for a moment. “N-no, not really,” he said. He was momentarily distracted by the producer rolling his hand in the air in front of him, as though to encourage him to elaborate. “Meld is perfectly safe when used in a clinical setting. I’m sure I’m in very good hands with Dr. Young.”

  “And even with all these suicides connected to the drug, that doesn’t worry you?” the anchor pushed.

  “Well, as ViMed has always maintained, those deaths occurred while taking Meld in an unsafe manner, without medical supervision. And we also suspect the drug was adulterated once it hit the streets. I am not worried.”

  “Why are you doing this, Mr. Adams?” the anchor asked. “Why you? Why now?”

  He wanted to say he had absolutely no idea, that he’d been asking himself the same questions and couldn’t find an answer. To any of it. But he felt Scott’s eyes boring into him, so he said what he was supposed to say.

  “I want to demonstrate that Meld is not only safe, but to remind people that this is a drug that saves lives,” he said. “Meld has already had tremendous impact on treating mental illness, Alzheimer’s disease and reaching the conscious minds of comatose patients. There is reason to believe that this drug might have other benefits we aren’t even aware of yet. Imagine the implications for people suffering from ALS—people who become trapped, essentially, in their own failing bodies, who’ve lost the ability to speak. Meld could help them, too.”

  The last bit was entirely ad-lib and meant for Scott’s ears. But if Charles Scott was worried about it, he didn’t let on. Still, Jeremiah was pleased with himself that he’d found the nerve to throw it in.

  At this point, the news anchors, spectators, film crew and producers began to file out of the room, along with Charles Scott and the man from the FDA. All of them would watch the actual Meld demonstration from the safety of a remote location to guard against any of their thoughts being accidentally picked up. While Jeremiah was relieved he wouldn’t have to risk getting an intimate view into the mind of Charles Scott, he couldn’t help wondering if it might have answered some questions and confirmed his suspicions.

  There was absolute silence when Natalie Young finally injected both Jeremiah and herself with the two different compounds of Meld and then moved her chair to face him head-on. Jeremiah closed his eyes and waited for the initial barrage of images he knew would come—snippets from her internal dialogue, odd bits of conversation with people he didn’t know, random yearnings and shadows of things she’d rather hide. But the first, fleeting image he saw from Natalie’s mind was something unexpected—a vague sense of shock. There was distinct hesitation from her. Almost the instant it appeared, she retrieved it and pulled it back. He didn’t understand what it was, what it meant, but Jeremiah was certain she’d been genuinely surprised by something she’d seen in his mind. Had she picked up so quickly on his suspicions about Scott? His desperation to warn Diana? Had those thoughts been that close to the surface? He fought to empty his mind, to think of something else, but before he could do it, she had already switched gears. She reined in her own emotions, and her mind began to bore into his as it usually did when they took the drug. He was helpless to do anything but give in to it. She was adept at this. The next thing he knew, he was cognizant, alone in his mind and free from the Meld’s hold. The panel filed back into the room and allowed him a few minutes to compose himself before rifling him with questions.

  “How do you feel, Mr. Adams?”

  “What do you remember?”

  “Can you describe the experience for the viewers at home?”

  “Do you feel any sudden depression?”

  Jeremiah answered warily, saying all the things he was supposed to say, hitting all the buzzwords and, generally, behaving exactly as he was expected to. He tried to steal a glance at Natalie, to see if he could determine what she’d seen in him, but she took pains, it seemed, not to catch his eye. She answered every question directly to the interviewer.

  “What I saw in Mr. Adams was a levelheaded, rational man,” she said. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing unexpected. I was able to probe his thought patterns, his self-perception, and see a bit of how he views the world. To me, he seems content. He is a perfectly normal man.”

  Whatever she saw when she looked at his mind through the Meld, Jeremiah thought, it wasn’t that.

  * * *

  Once the cameras were off and the producers began guessing at the viewership, Jeremiah found himself in the middle of a group of ViMed executives. Charles Scott was at his elbow.

  “Great job,” someone said to him. “I think this is going to work.”

  “Let’s hope so,” a nervous older woman said. “We’ve got too much riding on this.”

  Jeremiah nodded and shook hands with several people without saying much.

  “Come, Mr. Adams,” Charles Scott said. “I’ll walk with you to your car.”

  He was likely in a hurry, Jeremiah thought, to get back and hook him up to the clone. Jeremiah’s stomach turned at the realization he’d have to undergo the Meld twice in a single hour, and this time with his double. He didn’t even want to imagine what that would be like, seeing what was basically his own mind reflected back at him under the drug. He turned on his heels, said his goodbyes and followed Scott out of the room and into the hallway.

  They almost ran headlong into Brenda.

  “Oh, Mr. Adams,” she said, “I’m glad I caught you before you left.”

  Jeremiah said nothing but looked to Scott for some sort of cue. Scott looked ruffled for a moment and then quickly regained his composure.

  “Ah, it is my heroine,” he said with a smile. “Do you know, Mr. Adams, I might have missed the entire event tonight if not for this charming lady. She was kind enough to come to my aid when I was hopelessly lost.”

  “Brenda’s good at that sort of thing,” Jeremiah said, and then turned to her, hoping he sounded less anxious than he was. “You’re here late. I thought you’d be gone by now.”

  “Well, the phones were ringing off the hook as soon as the broadcast finished,” she told him. “I just stayed to field the calls. Everyone wants a quote or an interview.”

 
“I’ll get to them in the morning, Brenda,” Jeremiah said. “Let the broadcast speak for itself for now.”

  “That’s what I told them,” she said. “But I thought I’d bring you the messages, in case you want to contact anyone tonight. Your friend from the Times, Walt Thompson, called twice.”

  She handed Jeremiah a sizable stack of notes.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t know how I’d ever get anything done without you, Brenda. I have a lot to thank you for.”

  The look of slight surprise on Brenda’s face made him instantly aware that what he’d said was completely out of character for him. But he’d felt compelled to say something nice to her for once. Thankfully, though, the surprise left her face and she just smiled and shook her head.

  “Just doing my job, Mr. Adams. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  As soon as she was out of earshot, Scott leaned into him with a stern warning.

  “Be careful, Mr. Adams,” he said. “That could have gone very badly. Let’s get back to your office before we run into anyone else.”

  “Why don’t you tell me first, Dr. Scott,” he said, sensing his momentary upper hand, “what the hell the army was doing here?”

  “Certain military people have an interest in all of this. Beyond that, it’s none of your concern.”

  While Scott led him roughly by the elbow toward the elevator, Jeremiah took a certain delight in his own brashness. It felt good just to see Scott squirm.

  Pike was pacing back and forth in front of the doors as soon as the elevator opened on the twelfth floor.

  “Come, Mr. Adams,” he said tensely. “We need to get your memories into the clone as quickly as possible. The sedative won’t last much longer. We’ll do this in your office. It will make more sense if the clone regains consciousness there.”

  The entire floor was empty at this time of night, and the silence made Jeremiah uncomfortable. The hum of the water cooler and printers reverberated through the deserted hallways.

  “We had a brief encounter with the administrative assistant just now,” Scott told Pike. “That will need to be implanted.” He turned to Jeremiah. “Wait in your office, Mr. Adams. And put those messages where he’ll see them.”

  He’d almost given up on another chance. But they were leaving him alone in here. It wasn’t over.

  When the door closed and he was alone in his office for the first time in several months, Jeremiah felt so strange that he hesitated and wasted precious seconds just taking it in. He turned to look out his office window, but by now it was so dark outside that all he saw was his own reflection, looking disoriented and quite out of place here. He snapped back into clarity and grabbed for the phone, dialing his home number with barely a glance at the keypad. He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and listened anxiously as it rang three times, never taking his eyes off the office door.

  Parker picked up.

  Jeremiah froze for an instant at hearing his son’s voice on the phone. A wave of regret washed over him as he thought of all the things he wanted to say to his son. There wasn’t time.

  “Parker, get your mother to the phone.”

  “She’s not home, Dad. Hey, I watched you on TV. I can’t believe you took that stuff.”

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “Working, I guess.”

  Jeremiah hung up the phone without even saying goodbye to his son and tried to remember Diana’s cell phone number. He’d only ever dialed it by pressing one button on his own cell. He had no idea what it was.

  When he heard Scott and Pike in the hallway, progressing slowly with the dead weight of the unconscious clone, Jeremiah grabbed a pen. He had seconds to consider what he would write. He flipped to an empty page in the middle of a yellow legal pad on the desk and scrawled a message for his double: Diana is in danger. There are NO ACCIDENTS! Keep her home!

  He righted the pad, quickly pocketed the pen and nearly toppled over at the sight of the two men dragging the drugged clone into the office. It would have been an unnerving thing to see even if he hadn’t been frantic. He tried to steady his breathing while they settled his double at his desk.

  The downloading of the evening’s memories from his mind to his clone took all of fifteen minutes. Pike affixed several wires connecting Jeremiah’s head to that of his double, and then attached an additional connection to himself. He hastily explained that, this time, the Meld would feel different.

  “This is a one-way transfer,” he said. “But you may sense something from the clone. Anything you pick up should be minimal. To be honest, I’m not entirely certain what you’ll experience. We never prepared for this.”

  “What do I need to do?”

  “Nothing,” Pike said. “The hard connection will allow me to control the download. I’ll be able to filter everything. I can implant only what we need. Try to relax.”

  During the transfer, Jeremiah was hardly aware of anything except a vague sense of false confidence from his double. The sensation was hazy, hovering just in the background. But what he could sense from the clone’s mind was eerily familiar, as though his own random thoughts were flitting through his head. Afterward, he was shuffled out of the room by Scott and into the freight elevator, on his way back to the lab before the clone was even fully awake. Jeremiah wondered vaguely what they’d implanted in his mind to reconcile that he was about to wake up at his desk.

  Chapter 29

  Day 161

  Jeremiah had told Brent about the note he’d slipped to the clone. During the viewings over the next several days, both of them watched the clone with renewed interest and scrutiny to see if it had worked.

  “You’ve got some balls on you,” Brent said. “I’ll give you that.” He’d seemed impressed and worried at the same time, but they weren’t able to talk about it out loud in front of Mel’s painting and the camera. They had to be careful.

  Jeremiah was desperate to know if his risk had made a difference, whether he’d managed to get a warning to Diana. He held his breath for any glimpse of her during the viewings, any mention of her name or her whereabouts if she wasn’t present. It infuriated him that none of the viewings were at home while she was there.

  Much of what they saw took place in the clone’s office where he continued to be lauded for his brilliant public relations ploy. It had evidently been a resounding success. The doctor who’d killed himself was being referred to as little more than a Meld-crazed addict on most of the mainstream news outlets. Holdouts from the web and fringe press, though, were still skeptical and continued questioning the drug’s safety. Jeremiah silently applauded them, something he’d never have believed he’d ever do. But he made a point to keep all thoughts to himself during every viewing, unwilling to give Brent any additional fodder for his report. He was more immediately concerned with Diana.

  If he could have just seen her, he would have been able to relax a little. She was safe so far, he had gleaned that much, but that could have just been chance. He found himself peering into the eyes of his clone, trying to find some small measure of change in him. Every faraway glance, every hesitation when he spoke, suddenly took on new importance to Jeremiah. Had he found the note? Was he trying to work out the impossible discovery of such an ominous warning in his own handwriting? Was he aware of anything?

  For his part, the brief foray back into his own life had had a profound impact on Jeremiah. He could still hear the echo of Parker’s voice on the phone. It pulled at him. And he remembered the look on Brenda’s face when he’d thought to say a single kind thing to her. Most of all, he remembered the fleeting things he’d been able to see of his clone’s mind during those few minutes when they’d been connected under the Meld. His double seemed to hold himself in high regard, to be so confident in his position with ViMed, his place in the world. But what was troubling was what he’d seen just underneath that: the clone seemed to understand that he
was lying to himself, that none of that confidence was actually true. There was a real sense of doubt there, and although it had only been the briefest of flickers, Jeremiah had instantly recognized that doubt as his own. It had always been there, just under the surface, pushed away and rejected. It was a difficult thing to have seen, and he kept those thoughts to himself, too.

  Instead, as each four-hour segment passed with every indication that Diana was safe, Jeremiah clung to the profound satisfaction that his note had worked. He’d taken a risk and had made a difference. He might have foiled Scott’s plans for his wife. He might have actually done something. He savored that victory alone.

  At the end of another viewing watching the clone still basking in the glory of his publicity stunt, Brent traded his lab coat for a beer and seemed ready to settle in for the evening.

  “I’m tired, Brent,” Jeremiah said instead of engaging in the casual conversation. “Finish your beer and go home to Mel. I’m going to bed early.”

  Thirty minutes after Brent left the lab, Jeremiah all but collapsed onto his bed and fell into the first sound sleep he’d had in days. Sheer exhaustion finally won out over his own fretting.

  When he awoke in the darkened room, it took him a full minute to comprehend that someone was knocking impatiently at his front door in the next room. From the sound of it, they’d been trying to get his attention for a while. No one ever knocked like that on his door, he realized through a fog. Once his eyes adjusted, he saw by the clock on his bedside table that it was 2:28 in the morning.

  “What the hell,” he mumbled, and threw off the covers. “Yeah, just a minute!” he called.

  As he approached, pulling tight the belt on his bathrobe, he heard the familiar buzz and click of the electronic lock and the door eased open. Charles Scott stood in front of him, dressed uncharacteristically in a white T-shirt and khaki pants, as though he, too, had been roused from his sleep. His hair and demeanor, however, were in their usual state of perfection.