NLI-10

by Lee Isserow

  A bell chimed across a speaker system that sounded like it was built into the walls, alerting them that dinner was to be served. They tried to navigate their way through the labyrinthine hallways back to the mess hall. By the time they arrived, a buffet of hot food was steaming away at the far side of the room. Passing tables upon tables, they discovered a selection of four options for a main meal, two marked as vegetarian, a series of side dishes and a salad bar. Each filled up their plates, and sat at a table together.

  Peering around over small-talk, they noticed there were only six of them, and looked around the room to discover a chubby Chinese guy sitting right at the far side of the room at a table all alone, cackling to himself for being ridiculous. He took his plate and rejoined them, introducing himself to those he hadn't spoken to as Pete. His parents wanted him to be an economist, because he was born Chinese and his parents, who he assured everyone were also Chinese, were fond of stereotypes. He chuckled to himself as he retold a practised and crafted tale of how he explained to his parents he was not going to be an economist, and instead chose the dual occupations of 'stand-up comedian and professional homosexual'. When asked, Pete confessed that the stand-up career wasn't going so great as the homosexuality, but figured that the next three months could give him enough material to come out with a killer show for the Edinburgh festival next year, which was also where most of his money from the trial would be burnt. After twenty minutes, Pete quieted down to let the others talk about themselves, occasionally throwing in witticisms and semi-comedic observations about their lives.

  Farah was a secularised Muslim nurse who was going to use the money to help get her six and seven year old cousins out of Iran.

  “To start an adorable intifada?”, asked Pete, to awkward smiles.

  Alex introduced herself in a West Coast twang as “A half-black asexual transwoman”. She had decided when she started transitioning that it was better to start conversations with a label prescribed to herself, before anyone else could. Pete didn't have a joke about her, admitting that when he first saw her he just thought she was a gorgeous tall and muscular woman. Alex smiled at his compliment, and Micah came out with a slew of questions about the transitioning process. He had never met a transgender person, let alone one having to pay for their treatment themselves under the American health system, and was fascinated in both the psychology and the medical aspects of the process. To Sarah, it seemed that Alex had dealt with the questions a thousand times over, but she took them graciously, and with more patience than Sarah could imagine having. After the round of questions ended, Alex thanked Micah for not asking about her genitals, which prompted Pete to inquire “So, do you have an innie or an outie?”

  Alex threw a bread roll at his face, and it bounced somewhere across the room whilst the group laughed.

  Sarah noticed that a shy-looking blonde at the far end of the group was politely smiling, but seemed uncomfortable at the talk of transitioning and homosexuality. Sarah moved to the seat next to her and introduced herself. The blonde, Leah, was a Catholic and confided in Sarah that she had never had a conversation with a gay person, let alone a transwoman. She was finding being in Alex's presence a little overwhelming, let alone the idea of living with them for the next three months. Sarah assured her that it was going to be fun, that they'd all be the best of friends before she knew it, despite their differences. The seventh member of the group joined the two of them, introducing himself as Rob. He reassured Leah that she'd get used to it. Up until a few years ago he had been a Born-Again Christian, and when he got out, was blown away by the world of sexualisation and gender options.

  “So, now you're an aborted Christian?” asked Pete, joining the conversation to awkward silence.

  “And the crowd goes mild!” he added. “They can't all be gold nuggets, can they...”

  Smiles crawled up his audience's faces as he slowly stepped away from the table in a shameful backwards dawdle, bumping in to the table behind him and falling onto it with exaggerated motions, landing flat on his back with his hands posed like a corpse in a cartoon.

  The seven of them lingered in the mess hall until a bell chimed through the walls, encouraging them off to bed. There were no windows deep in the bunker, no way to tell whether it was day or night outside. The conversation dwindled as they got into bed and the lights slowly dimmed, as if based on a pressure sensor in the bunks, reacting to each of them lying horizontal.

  Sarah sighed, unsure if she was anywhere close to fatigued, and listened to the room tone. It was deathly silent but for a soft drone of something mechanical, accompanied by subtle vibrations that harmonised with one another. She tried to make it out, whether it was from some kind of machinery, air filtration unit or music from an adjacent room. It was barely audible, even when she pressed her ear to the wall to see if it was coming out of the speaker system. Laying back in bed, she looked at the red LEDs staring at the room from either corner. Her mission was going to be harder than she imagined it might be, but she had three months to build a mental map of the facility before it was time to strike. Three months to work out where incriminating files were, and where the camera feeds were accumulated to disable or delete the records of her infiltration. That would all have to wait, of course. For the next day the clinical trial was to begin.

  4

  The lights in the living quarters slowly came to life, illuminating the sleeping subjects in their beds. Alex stirred, to discover that Leah was already awake, reading from a book in the dark. A chime reverberated through the walls, waking the others apart from Pete, who was snuggled up in a ball deep under the covers. Micah threw a pillow at his head to force him from his slumber, as they all went through to the showers and got themselves ready for whatever the testing would entail. After emerging clean and fresh for the first day of the trial, they discovered blue hospital-style scrubs were waiting for them to change into.

  Clad in blue, unflattering cuts as Whark promised, they were taken to the mess hall by two large bald orderlies that Sarah thought looked like her chauffeur, but dressed-down in light grey shirts and slacks under white doctor style coats.

  After breakfast the giant men led the group to the rec room, where they imparted monosyllabic instructions to wait. Leah had brought her bible, but Rob distracted her from it, sparking a conversation about the differences between the Christianity in the book and how it was actually enacted in the real world. She tried to vaguely defend the acts of previous Popes, the religious right in America, and even The Crusades, but his arguments and reasoning for leaving the faith were based on fact and logic, backed up with quotes from the bible. He used Pete as an example of how being gay didn't make him a bad person.

  “Look at him, he's just like anyone else you know, except for his sexual preferences. Being gay isn't actually a sin in the bible, it's mentioned twice in Leviticus, 'you must not have intercourse with a man as one has with a woman', and it says that again within a few chapters of the first mention. Now, bear in mind that Leviticus is the third book of the Old Testament, and Christianity is based on the New Testament. You don't see modern Christians abstaining from pork or shellfish, only eating fish that have both fins and scales, or not mixing wool and linen in clothing... It's something that people have added over the years, amended or mistranslated from the original text.”

  Leah held the book tight in her hands, her eyes skittering away from Rob.

  “Have you ever been to The British Museum in London?” he asked. She shook her head. “They have the world's oldest bible there, and you have no idea how different it is to the King James. There's a copy online too, and it's full of 'corrections', maybe twenty-five thousand, I think? There's always been amendments to the bible, and as things become en vogue or hate-able, the bible is often amended to include or exclude those things. Think about the Pope, this pope has spent the last ten plus years changing the church, rejecting the wealth and regalia of the title, and living a humble and real life. Changing the doctrines and dogma to allow fo
r contraception, abortions, homosexuality, he's tried to reduce inequality and profiteering in the church, whilst in England every cathedral has a cafe and a gift shop... Do you remember what Jesus said to the traders in the temple?”

  Leah was feeling uneasy, but had the Sunday School answer that came out almost subconsciously.

  “Stop making my father's house a marketplace?”

  “Exactly.” said Rob with a smile and kind eyes.

  Leah looked into them and could tell his words weren't coming from a place of judgement, his lecture was heartfelt, from a man who had devoted his life to something that had betrayed him in some way, and he was trying to help her. She loosened her grip on the bible, and engaged him in conversation, wanting to know more about his real-world bible thoughts.

  Sarah observed the conversation in her periphery as she leafed through the final chapters of Neuromancer, whilst Pete and Micah played pool, and Alex and Farah started making their way through a box set of Bridezillas.

  “Read any other Gibson?” asked Micah, after missing a shot and rescinding the table to Pete.

  “This is my first.” said Sarah. Since meeting him, she had jumped to the assumption that Micah would have been a Gibson fan.

  “Oh, you're in for a treat. You gonna do the whole Matrix trilogy?” He asked.

  “No, God no, I try not to think about the other two existing.” she said.

  “Shit, not The Matrix movies, the rest of the Neuromancer trilogy, it's all set around The Cyberspace Matrix and The Sprawl.”

  “I didn't know it was a trilogy...” she said, half-wishing she had the other books, as she had little left of the one in her hands, and was in love with the world and characters.

  “I've got them on my Kindle if you want to have a read – got his whole back catalogue – assuming you don't mind sacrificing the smell and texture of real books for a robot one.” he smiled, ribbing her in a way that reminded her of Bobby.

  “Sure, I'll make the sacrifice.” she said, her words lost amidst a chime through the walls as the orderlies stepped back into the room.

  “Alex Scott?” said the one on the left, who Sarah couldn't tell apart from the one on the right.

  Alex made herself known and they took her out into the hallway towards the first session of the trial. The others went back to their activities whilst they waited for their turn to be called.

  An hour and a half later, Alex was brought back in and it was Pete's turn. Ninety minutes more and it was Farah, then Leah, and finally Sarah's. She followed the giant footsteps of the near-identical hairless orderlies, whom she had decided to nickname 'Balderlies', along the corridor. They reached for the gleaming security pad, unlocking the door to the testing section of the facility, and she tried to add the twists and turns of the hallways to her mental map along with the placement of the cameras, but it was starting to get confusing. She felt like the walk, which had taken five minutes, was going round in circles, as if they were intentionally misleading her map. Finally, they came to a door, which Sarah was certain was at the end of the first corridor they walked down, but couldn't be certain. They ushered her inside, where the nurse from the facility in Shadwell was waiting for her, with a big beaming smile on her face. She sat Sarah down on a big leather chair at the centre of the room, computers and machinery flanking it against the walls, and told her to get comfortable as she placed electrodes on her head.

  “Are you ready?” asked the nurse.

  Sarah wasn't sure what answer she was expecting other than the inevitable “Yes.”

  The nurse typed at a console by the wall and the chair slowly whirred, dropping back into a reclining position, laying almost completely horizontal, wires trailing from her head along the floor in various directions to different machines that were monitoring her. Installed in the ceiling above was a large flatscreen television that burst to life with a video of a serene countryside scene, a river flowing, light breeze through the grass, sun setting off in the distance. Classical music started playing through the walls of the room. Sarah didn't recognise the music itself, but buried deep beneath the strings and horns were familiar noises from the walls of the living quarters. A whir with harmonious tones, which were joined by deep rhythmical thumps, like the sounds of a robotic womb. The images on the screen dissolved into scenes of a happy family with a young girl having a picnic in a park, then on to a flashy sports car driving on a mountain road, and a magnificent yacht rolling across an azure ocean. The music transitioned into darker realms, picking up a minor key, imagery changing to follow suit. Storm clouds rolled across an urban cityscape, starving African children surrounded by flies and arid land, an ambulance crew trying to help the bleeding victim of a terrible car wreck. The music went even darker, sharp piercing strings, thunderous drums bellowing, the video dissolving further into more disturbing territories. War torn villages of terrified people, lines of refugees, scenes from the holocaust. In an instant, it shifted back to light music and a deer in a lush forest, then straight back to shrill tones and decaying flesh. Sarah watched the scenes play out as the orchestral score darted back and forth, the tones hidden beneath the music staying consistent throughout. She wondered what they were monitoring with the electrodes.

  'Is it to gauge my emotional reactions? Or maybe it's designed to map my neural pathways or whatever, see how damaged my brain is from the substance abuse?'

  The ninety minutes of the test flew by, which was surprising, given her Persisting Perception Disorder. Before Sarah knew it, the music and imagery came to an end and the chair returned to its upright position. She looked over to the nurse and caught her taking earplugs out. Sarah wanted to ask her about them, whether they were to protect her from the volume of the music, or from whatever was buried in the tones underneath, but didn't in case it drew attention to her. The nurse disconnected the electrodes, and the Balderlies were waiting at the door to take her back through the corridors. They took a path that Sarah was almost certain was different to the one they led her down originally. Returning her to the rec room, Rob was asked to follow them for his first session. Three hours later he and Micah were done with their sessions, and just as Micah was about to resume his game of pool, Whark entered the room, commanding their attention.

  “How are we all feeling this afternoon?” she asked. They all responded with nods, agreements of good vibes and smiles which she mirrored falsely.

  “Marvellous.” she said, standing at the door as an awkward silence fell on the room, as if she was monitoring their reactions. “If you'd like to come with me, I believe you're all ready for the first round of drugs.”

  She led them out, followed by the orderlies, and Sarah recalled Whark's statement about how her psychedelic experiences were helpful to the trial, and tried to broach the subject with the others.

  “So, have you all... uh... indulged in psychoactive substances?”

  “Yeah, of course.” said Micah. ”How else you gonna get by in this cruel hard world...”

  “I've done shrooms a few times.” said Alex.

  “God, I loved shrooms as a kid.” added Rob “But after getting back out into the world, I fell in love with Mescaline. That's some gorgeous shit. Never laughed so hard in my life.”

  “Where the hell did you find Mescaline?” asked Pete. “I was lucky if my guy could fill my, uh, 'prescription' for 2CB... he usually just sold me ex and told me it was 2C.”

  The rest of their twisting and turning walk through the hallways was spent going back and forth about which drugs they loved and what combination was best. Sarah enjoyed the conversation more than she expected. It had been nineteen weeks of sobriety, not being able to revel in the good times with narcotics. Even though she knew being clean was the right decision, it was nice to reminisce. Through the whole discussion, Leah wasn't involving herself in the conversation, and once again Sarah thought it looked like she was feeling like an outsider.

  “Are you ok?” Sarah asked the timid blonde.

  “Yeah...” she s
aid, sheepishly, eyes to the floor. “I just never had any... y'know, experiences with these things.”

  Sarah wasn't sure what to make of Leah's inexperience with drugs. Whark had seemed so pleased at how Sarah had screwed up her brain with chemicals, and yet one of their number was entirely inexperienced. Maybe, she thought, they needed a subject that was clean, as some kind of comparison or baseline for whatever they were going to be testing them with. She considered asking Leah why she signed up for the testing at all, as it seemed like it would be the type of thing a staunch Catholic wouldn't be in favour of, but decided the shy girl would probably be made even more uncomfortable by the line of questioning, and it would probably come out as their time together continued.

  Whark led the group into a large bright room where they each had a chair of their own, and were hooked up to IV bags whilst the room tones droned softly in the background. Sarah ignored the drug conversation that was continuing amongst the others and tried to make out the drug name that was written on the bag. It was facing away from her, and the letters were distorted through the clear fluid. She watched the Balderlies in her periphery and waited for them to turn their heads to confirm that they, like the nurse, were wearing earplugs. Now certain it was to do with the noises she could hear in the background, as if they were part of the trial, maybe more so than the drugs that were dripping down into their veins. The conversation petered out and the group sat in silence for the next thirty minutes as the fluids drained into their system. Once the bags were dry, they were told that was it for the day, and for the week as far as clinical studies were concerned. Taken back to the mess hall, they discovered smoothies were waiting for them at their table. Sipping them over dinner, each noted a chemical twang in the aftertaste. Micah noted that it tasted familiar.