No Geek Rapture for Me_I'm Old School

by Jonelle Renald

  — “Pay attention, Mia. You’re in trouble. They are trying to harvest your soul, reap it like a standing field of grain. But do not fear, that won’t be permitted. I will be with you, and you will escape unharmed.”

  — “So this is a dream. Not so bad, not so bad. I don’t mind. Not too much anyway. I can take it. For awhile anyway. Wish I could move. Wow, look at that. So many dimensions! Where are they coming from? There’s too many dimensions! Thirteen, fourteen, sixteen dimensions. I can’t see! Angles and shapes coming at me everywhere! Where is up?”

  — “What you see right now, it’s not real. But some of it won’t be a dream. You’ll understand better later.”

  — “Who are you?”

  — “You know. We’ve been introduced. You don’t listen to me very often, but I always hear you.”

  — “Oh. Oh! You must be my shepherd. Hi, Shepherd King. You take care of me, fix me a table loaded with food and other stuff. Goodness and mercy chase me down to do me good.”

  — “Hi, Mia. Yes, that’s right. I do all those things for you. I will guide you through this dark place in the shadow of death. Don’t be afraid. Help is on the way.”

  — “But I want to run away. What’s that stench!? I need to run away! The sun is turning black, and the world is flattening. How will my heart beat in a land of two dimensions? I don’t like it, make it stop!”

  — “You have nothing to fear even in this place. Listen to my voice. You’re in the tank submerged in that chemical milk bath you saw earlier. I will help you escape unharmed. I’ll tell you want to do and when. They’re trying to talk to you now. Can you hear what they’re saying?”

  — “I’m Mia.”

  — “Yes, Mia. That’s right. Can you hear them?”

  There was a sound of some kind, but it made no sense. Then the sound faded away to nothing. “No, not really.”

  — “Try again. Listen.”

  This time she could hear a distorted voice, as if coming out of a broken intercom. A warble-y quaver of static-y sounds, running up and down the scale. Was that a voice?

  “SSSSssssssquawk. Blllrrrrrkl mddshh for you. Stop fighting the machine. Relax, Mia. Let it breathe for you. Okay, your oxygen levels are improving now.You’re hooked up to a breathing apparatus because you’re submerged in a photon-enriched chemical milk bath that is amplifying the conductivity of your brain activity and supplying your body with elevated levels of dopamine and endorphins. You’re also connected to electrodes and wiring contained in a helmet that monitors and translates electrical signals generated by mental activity into images, which then broadcasts those image signatures as they are being absorbed into hippocampus.”

  Mia looked at TJ. He nodded yes and said, “You will be fine,” at the same time the Instruction Man said “You will be fine.”

  Instruction Man: “You will be fine. Just relax, let the machine breathe for you. Don’t try to talk. You don’t need to because we can hear the subvocal words that you think. Just think a reply. Relax. Stop fighting the machine. Yes, that’s much better now.”

  Mia: “Won’t talk but I can sing, I bet. TJ the shepherd, do you want to hear me sing? This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.”

  There was a second voice on the instruction intercom.

  “Look at that! The temperature of her right hand is seven degrees warmer than the rest of her body. Wait. Wait. Having troubbbb-k-le connectttingggzk.”

  Mia: “Go away. I don’t like this anymore. Your voices are tearing to shreds, and it hurts my eyes. I don’t have to mind what you say, Instruction Man. And you can’t make me.”

  Instruction Man: “We need your help with a couple of things first, Mia, then we will quit. Would you do that? It won’t take long. We promise it will only take a few minutes.”

  Second Voice: “I’m not registering a clear response to that.”

  Instruction Man: “Well, obviously she did respond. Let’s see if we can pinpoint the problem with a quick systems check. My gauges show that there nothing wrong with chemical composition of liquid photon conductor. Nothing wrong with the endocrine delivery and balance in the milk bath.”

  Second Voice: “Helmet function is nominal as are the electrophysiological laminascopic and video translation functions. There don’t seem to be any malfunctions anywhere.”

  Instruction Man: “Hmm. No explanation for why we can’t register and record the evident responses or why we can’t see what she’s seeing? Well, let’s proceed anyway. See what you can do to make adjustments while we proceed with the test to capture her responses. — Mia, let’s start with you telling us your name.”

  “Mia Maria, Santa Sophia.”

  Second Voice: “Is she drunk or high? She sounds baked out of her mind to me. Crispy baked. Is that how it sounds to you? No one has ever reacted this way before.”

  Instruction Man: “Up the serotonin dose. Let’s see what that does.”

  Second Voice: “OK. OK. Increased. Checking. OK, better now. Improvement in video connection. We’re getting some images now, although they’re not very much in focus, images still mostly blurry. Ask what she can see.”

  Instruction Man: “What do you see, Mia?”

  “Maria.”

  Instruction Man: “What do you see, Maria?”

  “Mia.”

  Instruction Man: “What do you see, Mia?”

  “Maria.”

  Second Voice: “Why is she doing that?”

  Instruction Man: “Do you see a door?”

  Second Voice: “Why do we always make them open the door?”

  Instruction Man: “I have no idea. I was told it helps get them mentally prepped for the mind uploading. Mia, do you see a door?”

  “Stairs — UP!”

  Instruction Man: “You see stairs? Head up — oh. You already are. Guess we’re going to skip the door this time. Video seems to be improving. I can vaguely make out her going up some stairs in the video output. What do you see on the instruments?”

  Second Voice: “She seems to be adversely reacting to the anesthetic. I’m going to have to reduce the flow or she will stroke out. A reduction may also mitigate the euphoric reaction. But still having trouble maintaining a stable media connection with her mind. As it is now, we won’t be able to upload her mind, not even to the video monitors.”

  Mia chanted the name of a grain for every step up the stairs. “Wheat. Barley. Corn. Canola. Soy. Beans. Al. Fal. Fa. Millet. Rice. Wild Rice. Both count, they’re not the same thing! Quinoa. Kamut. Corn. No, go back. Already said corn. Tah-Pih-Oh-Cah. Because they make it into flour, it counts. No, you have to count it. If it can be made into bread, you have to count it. Two more. Rye! Forgot rye for a minute. Can’t forget rye. One more. Buckwheat and amaranth. It’s extra. In case canola doesn’t count.”

  Instruction Man: “That’s great, Mia. We just have a couple of questions to ask you. There was a kidnapping in Ohio yesterday, a three year old boy. Where is the missing child now, Mia? Tell me. What do you see?”

  Ignoring this verbal distraction, Mia finished climbing to the top of the stairs and looked around. She was on the second level of a gigantic stone castle, in a gallery passageway on top of the outer wall, tall arches outlining a long corridor down the length of the wall. She walked over to the parapet and breathed in the fresh air blowing. No bad smells here. TJ Hodges was standing over in the shadow of an archway, and when she looked at him, he put his finger to his lips. Mia nodded and said, “Shh. Right.” Silently, she pointed at him, then gave him a thumb’s up.

  Instruction Man: “Don’t you want to help us find this little lost boy, Mia? Can you tell us where he is? What do you see?”

  It was dark, the sun already down in this place (wherever this was), the horizon showing the last tatters of twilight. Light was provided by a full moon ov
erhead, three times larger than normal. There were mountains in the distance, covered in snow. Below, the drawbridge was down, spanning a deep moat filled with water. Lit by a pair of torches, she could see that the entrance into the castle was blocked by a lowered portcullis and behind it, a massive wooden door. A road led away from the castle and disappeared into the darkness. She crossed to the other side of the gallery, looking down on a courtyard covered in black and white squares like a chessboard. She went back to the exterior side of the gallery, pointed and said to Hodges, “Gate.” Then she slumped over the stone of the parapet and said, “Play ball!” And then she started humming the song, Sweet Caroline. The only words she knew were, “So good! So good! So good!” so she sang that part over and over and over again, loudly.

  Instruction Man: “What reading are you getting from her now? Can you decipher where she is by what you see on the screen? I’m not getting straightforward output that helps clarify her mental imaging. All these readings are completely different from anything we’ve seen before. These aren’t memories, but other than that I’m not sure what we’re getting here. The difference may explain why the quality of the video output is so poor right now. It’s difficult to make out any of the images.”

  Mia stopped singing when she heard a loud booming knock on the gate of the castle.

  A multi-toned voice called out, “I see you, Mia. Let me in. I see you. Come open the door for me. I need to have you let me in.”

  Troubled, Mia frowned. This was the same digital-y voice that she had heard on the intercom in the observation room overlooking the lab earlier, coming from the man in the chemical milk bath after he had passed out. She. Didn’t. Like. This. At. All. She called out, “Knock, knock! Who’s there?”

  She smiled at Hodges, who came over to guide her to a staircase leading down to the gate. She ran down to a small door cut into the large wooden door spanning the gateway into the castle, Hodges following. He nodded yes, so she opened the smaller door and looked out through the squares of the lowered portcullis. There, standing on the drawbridge outside the barricade was a tall, beautiful woman in Renaissance dress, all in bright colors, scarlet and purple, bejewelled and draped in pearls, with a high lace collar and circlet on her head glowing like a halo. She was at least ten inches taller than Mia. Maybe more like twenty.

  Beautiful Woman: “Let me in, Mia. We need to talk about a few things before you go.”

  “Who shall I say is calling?”

  Beautiful Woman: “It’s me, Mia. No doubt, you know who I am.”

  “You look like one of Dih-, Duh-, Dansey’s evil queens.”

  The beautiful woman replied, but Mia could not hear her voice. Behind her, Hodges spoke over her and said, “And she was fair as is the rose in May.”

  Facing him, Mia said in Italian, “Cleopatra lussuriosa. Femina di grande animo, e molto prudente, ma non meno lasciva.”

  Hodges said in English, “The audacity of the woman requesting it was as great as the stupidity of the man who promised it!”

  Mia shouted, “Catalyst for disaster, she destroyed whatever good and saving graces still offered resistance in Antony.”

  Hodges raised his arms toward the sky and chanted, “The blast, the eternal tempest lashes sense-drugged Cleopatra.”

  Mia blinked as a bright flash of lightning was quickly followed by the roar of thunder, and a fierce cold downpour of rain began to spatter her face. She turned to look again at the woman waiting outside the portcullis, now drenched by the cloudburst, her hair and bright clothes dripping with water.

  “Yes, I do know you, Cleopatra!” Mia shouted. “And I won’t let you in. You can’t be trusted! You stole Antony’s soul away from him. You made impossible promises of everlasting earthly delights, but in return, you expected impossible things from him. After you got what you wanted, you ran away from him at the first sign of trouble. Just when things started to go badly for him, you abandoned him! Go back to hell. The second ring in hell is where Dante put you. That’s where you belong!”

  Instruction Man: “You took the anesthetic drip down too far! We’ve lost the connection. She’s started to come around. She’s almost gained consciousness.”

  Mia covered her ears at three more loud explosive BOOMs.

  “I told you! Quit knocking! You can’t come in! I won’t let you in, so quit asking. Go away! In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I’m commanding you. Go back to Hell!”

  The wind and the rain intensified. As Cleopatra screamed, she was picked up by the wind and drawn feet first up into the storm clouds above. At the same time, Mia was getting into serious trouble herself. She turned away from the castle gateway and staggered toward the inner courtyard with the checkerboard surface. “TJ, help me! I can’t breathe! Can’t move!”

  Second Voice, shouting: “What was that?!”

  And on the other side of the checkerboard in the castle courtyard, in full regalia of green, black, white, and blue plaid, kilts with sporrans, bonnets and feathers, a squad of Highland drummers started a cadence, the rhythm of the snare drums beating loudly against her ears.

  “Make them stop, Hodges! I can’t breathe, TJ!”

  The agony of the crushing pain in her lungs was so great, Mia collapsed to the ground. The only thing she wanted to do now was to jump completely out of her body, leap away from the pain, the agony, and the smothering. If she tried hard enough, maybe she could escape the anguish by pushing her soul and spirit away from her body, departing to find an escape from this torture.

  “I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t — can’t —”

  TJ knelt next to her, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Hold on for just a few seconds longer. Help is almost here.”

  Lying on the checkerboard surface of the courtyard, overwhelmed by the din of the snare drums, Mia tried to lie still but couldn’t stop writhing. Her lungs were burning from a lack of oxygen, but she couldn’t take a breath in because there was something blocking her throat, making her gag. It seemed like the drums had completely cut off her air supply, but still the cadence kept going and going and going. She shook her head over and over. She didn’t think she could hold on, no matter what TJ said. Unless she could breathe, immediately, she wouldn’t make it.

  20 | Snare

  With the echo of the snare drums ringing in her ears, in a panic, Mia came to. Someone was raising her head up, his arm supporting her head while pulling a breathing tube out of her throat. She gagged and then gasped for breath, but some caustic white chemical got into her throat along with that gasp, forcing her to struggle between breathing and choking. As first priority, her lungs needed oxygen, were desperate for the least little bit of oxygen, yet she couldn’t stop choking. Gasping, she tried to pull herself up, but her arms uselessly banged against the side of the tank she was encased in, nothing on its smooth sides for her hands to grab onto. The unseen rescuer raised her head even higher, and she managed to catch a small breath, but the chemicals she’d already breathed in were scorching her lungs, so coughing and choking, she had to fight to take another breath. Adding to the discomfort as she became more aware of what was happening, she couldn’t see, and she was submerged in some foul smelling liquid that she thought she had smelled before but couldn’t remember where. Struggling, she tried to get away from the unseen hands lifting her head up, fighting against the confusion and the stink all around her.

  “Ethan! I need your help with Mia.”

  There was another explosion and more gunfire at a distance.

  “I’ve got her arms. Pull the VR goggles and helmet off now.”

  Mia blinked, her eyes rolling wildly. The pupils of her eyes were incredibly bright and glowing, giving off a blue light of their own. She could see now but the appearance of the place she was in wasn’t making any sense. All the shouting and other loud noises nearby plus the darkness all around confirme
d her feeling that everything surrounding her was a threat to her safety, including the hands trying to grab her, tugging at her, gripping under her arms, and she tried to push with her feet to get away from them, but she couldn’t get any traction on the slippery surface of the tank she was in.

  “Grab her legs.”

  A tall man with long dark hair tied back, moustache and beard, plunged his hands into the milky liquid, but Mia did her best to stop him from grabbing her. When he raised one of her knees above the level of the foul chemical bath, she used that opportunity to knock him in the face with her other knee — hard.

  From above her head, she heard the first rescuer’s voice say quietly in her ear, “Mia, stop that! We’re trying to help you.”

  In spite of the blow to his face, the tall man didn’t step back or drop the leg he had. Next try, he succeeded in grabbing both of Mia’s legs. He said, “Quick! Lift her out of the tank.”

  As she was being transported through the air, Mia arched her body to escape their grasp, using her hands to grab whatever she could find, pulling as hard as she could. She didn’t break their grip, but she did rip the front pocket and a button off someone’s shirt. “Once we set her down, hold her legs until she stops struggling.”

  With all her contortions, the landing on the floor was less than gentle. The hands under her arms let go as she was propped up against the base of the tank. The face of an older man with white hair moved into her field of vision. “Mia! Mia! Look at me! Do you know who I am?” He held her hands to prevent her from striking out at him.

  The pupils of her eyes were still glowing, but not as much as before. She turned her head away and tried to jerk her hands out of his grip. He repeated, “Mia. Who am I?” His voice, quieter this time, sounded familiar to her. She turned back and looked at his face. It made her feel safe, even if she didn’t know why. And his voice made her feel happy in the middle of all the noise and confusion.

  “TJ? TJ was helping me.”