by Ted Dekker
“He’s right,” Mikil agreed, stepping forward. She faced the crowd, her long red-and-blue tunic bright in the firelight. “At the very least, we must hold council. We have no idea how these Elyonites would receive us.”
“They’re Albino,” Johan said, staring at Talya. “They have an army?”
“Equal to the Horde’s.”
Johan regarded Thomas, right brow raised. His thoughts were clear: an Albino army would tip the balance of power in their favor.
But Vadal was more deeply invested in the Circle’s pacifism than most. “What good is their army if they see us as the enemy? I refuse to go anywhere near war.”
“My son is among them!” Chelise cried. “We should go!”
“Samuel’s only concern is revenge!” Vadal shot back. “He’s always been—”
“Enough!” Thomas stepped forward. “Mikil, Johan, Suzan. Quickly, gather the children and send them up the back canyon under the guard of a hundred warriors, then return to us.”
Mikil hesitated.
“Now!”
She whistled, initiating the evacuation order for the young and weak. A hundred fighters moved with practiced precision, calling the children to them. Within seconds a stream of children and a third of the adults flowed around the boulder Thomas stood on, hurrying up the narrow canyon behind them.
Thomas studied Talya, who seemed to have no qualms about imminent war. How many Albinos had been slaughtered by the Horde over the years? Too many to count. And each time, the Circle celebrated their dead’s passing into the higher realm. But the joy of that passing had been replaced by weeping these last few years.
“Only remember that if you live by the sword,” Talya said, voice low, “you will die by the sword. The choice is yours, either way.”
“You’re condoning the use of the sword?”
“I neither condone nor condemn. I merely point out that in this plane of existence you reap whatever you sow.”
Talya paced to his right and addressed the fifteen hundred who remained. “Follow Thomas across the Great Divide to the Marrudo plateau. There you will find life.”
“You’ve already told him you’ll go?” Vadal snapped at Thomas. “We must know more!”
“I’ve said nothing.”
“Thomas will go,” Talya said. “He’ll go because the 49th needs him. And you’ll follow Thomas, because you know that what I’ve said is true. You live in as much fear as the Horde. The Realm of Mystics awaits you. It’s time to come home.”
A shrill call cut through the air—the all too familiar cry of an enemy sighting. Thomas spun south, eyes peeled for a sign. A second call joined the first, this one from the hills to the west. For a brief moment, nothing more. Then the distant, muffled rumbling of a thousand horses, felt more than heard.
“Horde!” voices cried.
And on the heels of the warning, “Swords!”
They all kept weapons but used them only to defend, never to kill, despite their training in the Roush arts. Except for some on the fringe, like Samuel, the fighting arts had become more like a dance than a means of survival.
The Circle ran for the horses in the side canyon, throwing themselves into saddles, snatching up their blades.
Talya grabbed Thomas’s shoulder and spun him back. Then stepped in front of Chelise so that he faced both of them with his back to the scattering Circle. Without warning, he spit—a fine spray that lighted on Thomas’s face. Then Chelise’s.
“So you might see what is to be seen when the time comes.”
Chelise blinked, wiping her face and eyes. “What—”
“Take the Circle to the plateau beyond the Great Divide at all costs, Thomas,” he interrupted. “Camp there under the north star and have the Circle wait. Then go with Chelise to the Mystics five miles south. You’ll know the Realm when you see the colored forest. The survival of all depends on the 49th. She needs you.”
Thomas could hear the Horde’s battle cry now, a deep, throaty rattling of rage. It was too late to run.
“There are other considerations! I have three thousand souls here alone, another seventeen thousand in the other tribes.”
Talya glanced between them. “Come, and come quickly.”
Without another word, he stepped around them and strode toward his lion.
3
THEY TOLD ME that DARPA subcontracted nearly all of its projects to private firms like Boeing or MIT, so they didn’t have large labs and facilities to handle multiple projects. Project Eden had been special, as was the White Center, where my father and I were being helped.
We called it the White Center because it was mostly white. The rooms, both halls, the recreation area, the dining room, the three labs—all white. Only the large black tiles on the checkerboard floor and the furniture added color and contrast. The furniture was a soft green, and the covers on the beds in both my and my father’s rooms were pink. Not a girly pink but a fuchsia pink.
After finishing up with Charlene I played chess with my father in the rec room. Thanks to the MEP he’d forgotten everything that happened in Eden. He’d also somehow forgotten how to play the game, so I took it upon myself to teach him. Being so smart, he was a quick learner—better than me after only a couple of months.
That’s what we did most of the time—took tests, ate, slept, read approved novels, and lounged in the rec room, talking, watching old 2-D movies or playing games. We had a soda machine, a foosball table (my dad always won when he was trying), a coffee and tea dispenser, two small card tables, a 60-inch panel television, the green couches, and on one wall a cool water feature that changed color.
You might think I would be bored most of the time, but the hours seemed to float by and be gone before I knew it. Some of the drugs they were giving me messed with my short-term memory, so sometimes I couldn’t clearly remember what had happened even a short time ago. Like the effects of cannabis, Mary told me.
Mary Newman was our caretaker, a nurse who usually wore green scrubs. She sometimes played games with us and was always willing to talk. I found conversations with her interesting because, although older than me by more than ten years, she hadn’t grown up in Eden. She offered me an insider’s look at the world I would soon be entering, after my brain could handle it. In the meantime, I was full of questions.
If the population of the world had already passed twelve billion, where did they grow all the food? Did people still hold hands and kiss? What about dating—did she think anyone would want to go out with me?
One of my greatest wishes was to meet another girl my age or younger. I wanted to know how ordinary people lived. What was it like to be a seventeen-year-old girl not living in Eden or in the White Center?
I asked and listened for hours as she told me all about her life, her husband, Chuck, and her two children, Johnnie and little Milly, short for Mildred.
Another thing that fascinated me to no end—her description of virtual reality movies, which were like games that you could interact with. When you were in them, you had to keep reminding yourself that it was only holographic or you could easily get lost in another world.
“Like Eden in some ways,” Steve explained to me. “Only in Eden we changed your brain itself, not the external world you were in.”
You see, that was what fascinated me. How did we know we weren’t living in a holographic world now? I mean, I’d been fooled in Eden for so many years. What if we were all fooled?
He chuckled. “Nice try. I don’t think so.”
But still . . .
Steve was the other person we spent a lot of time with. He was a genius intensely interested in our progress, and he was kind to me. Though he was only twenty-eight years old, I saw him as a kind of second father. The one who cared for me and would protect me.
He said the world’s technology would be far more advanced than it currently was if not for the Cyber War of 2021, which had set the world back by at least a decade, maybe more. The internet had been radically corrupted,
and world commerce had come to a near standstill for a month before being slowly rebuilt with new security measures, which Steve still didn’t trust.
Once each week, Steve took me to church at Washington National Cathedral, a twenty-minute drive from DARPA. They thought my going to a controlled religious setting would help to ground me, because I’d grown up with deep religious roots. I could go as long as I behaved myself and didn’t talk to anyone. I didn’t care that much for the sermons, but I quickly grew to love the weekly ventures into the real world. We always sat at the back, and I never gave the therapists a reason to change their minds about my going.
In a nutshell, that was my world, and I didn’t dislike it.
After playing chess with my father, I spent most of the afternoon lounging in the rec room, scanning the hundreds of approved movies, looking for something interesting that I hadn’t watched. We didn’t have access to any streaming content from the outside world, so this was it. I couldn’t find anything new, so I settled for watching an old movie called The Matrix again—at least my twentieth time, but my brain couldn’t remember how many. Maybe that’s why I watched certain movies over and over: I couldn’t remember the details, so every time I watched, it was almost like the first time.
I was lost in the scene where Neo was stopping bullets with his hand, thinking I’d seen something like it before, maybe not just in this movie, when the voice I associated with Steve spoke to me in a distant whisper.
She’s watching it again.
Maybe Steve was behind me, but I had to learn how to ignore the voices. Practice makes perfect.
She knows, I heard.
This time the draw was too much, and I turned my head, half expecting to see Steve. Instead, I saw glowing writing etched into the wall, like someone had carved it deep, and light from behind was seeping through. A visual hallucination. Sometimes I saw doors, other times the wall moving. The writing on the wall was a new one.
I turned back to the movie, but now that writing wouldn’t leave my mind. So I looked again. Still there, plain as day. And now my curiosity was getting the best of me.
I slipped off the couch and walked up to the wall, thinking it just might be real this time. Even though I knew it couldn’t be, my pulse quickened.
I stopped in front of it, waiting to see if it shifted or wavered like some hallucinations. Nothing. Just what looked like real words carved into the wall.
What is seeing beyond what you think should be, daughter?
It made no sense to me. A riddle? Or maybe I was seeing it because I thought I shouldn’t be schizophrenic, and my mind was telling me I needed to heal. Which was what DARPA was helping me do. Or maybe it wasn’t a hallucination. Maybe it was real, carved into the wall right here.
I’d just lifted my hand when I heard a soft cough. I jerked my hand away and turned. Steve was watching from behind the couch.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”
Glancing back at the wall, I saw the words were gone. Just a white wall. Figured.
“What do you see?”
“Nothing. Just some words,” I said, returning to plop back down on the cushions.
“Words, huh? What words?”
“‘What is seeing beyond what you think should be,’” I said. “Something like that.”
“Interesting. Does it mean anything to you?”
“It means I should stop seeing things,” I said. “Have you seen my dad?”
“He’s in his weekly health check.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost seven.”
The time had flown. Seven already and no dinner yet? That was odd.
“Mary’s wrapping up with him,” Steve said, walking around the couch and sitting next to me, eyes on the movie. Neo was recognizing his power. Re-cognizing—once again knowing. Re-cognize yourself. Clever thought. It’s what I was doing.
“About the words on the wall—”
“An illusion,” I interrupted, nodding at the movie. “And maybe the wall’s just an illusion too. Everything’s perception, right? If my brain can tweak things so that I’m seeing what isn’t there, maybe yours is too. In fact, how can anyone know that what they’re seeing is really there the way they see it? What if they’re just seeing another illusion? What if everyone is blind and doesn’t know it?”
She knows . . .
“I know that I know,” I said.
“You know?”
“Sorry. I was just speaking to the voice in my head. See, it’s not only a visual matrix but an auditory one. All five senses.”
“If you know that, why are you so agreeable to us helping you hear and see what everyone else is hearing and seeing?”
I looked over at him. “Because I can’t function in a society where I see one thing and everyone else sees something else, even if what they’re seeing isn’t really what they think it is.”
His brow arched. “You think that what others see isn’t real?”
Back to the movie. “No. But you can’t fault my logic.”
“You’re right, I can’t. I guess you’ll just have to trust me when I say that what I’m seeing is at least reasonably accurate. Although emerging science now suggests that the whole world is in gravitational quantum entanglement and is actually malleable. But we’ll leave that dimensional exploration to others.”
She’s our best chance of doing just that, but I have no choice.
“What’s up?” I asked.
He stood and took a deep breath. “We think we’ve found a way to speed your recovery. It’s not a quick fix, but it might stop your hallucinations.”
I sat up. “All of them?”
“All of them. You think that would be a good thing?”
I didn’t need to think about it. “Very.”
He paced with one hand on his hip as if concerned. “It’s not guaranteed, and it does come with some risks.”
“What risks? What’s the procedure?”
“We’ve decided to try a newer version of the memory protocol to reboot your mind.”
“I thought the MEP didn’t work with my mind.”
“This isn’t the old MEP. Something quite different. If we can neutralize your unconscious memories, your neural connections will lose their habitual patterns and be free to form new ones without the old-school drug therapy.”
I got it. One thing I’d learned: most people don’t know that over ninety percent of their thoughts are unconscious. They don’t even know they’re thinking them. These thoughts determine our perception of the world more than anything else, which is why people have such a hard time thinking positive thoughts when they’ve subconsciously programmed their brain to think negatively. Ninety percent of their brain is thinking negative thoughts even while they’re trying to think positive thoughts.
Clearing the mind’s unconscious patterns was the key to healing.
“I’ll do it.”
He looked at me, surprised. “Just like that?”
“Why not? It’s not easy being a schizophrenic. Besides, I’m guessing I don’t really have a choice, do I?”
“You always have a choice. But they’re quite eager for this.”
“You mean the director.”
“The director.”
“So what are the risks?”
“Well, for starters, you could lose what’s so wonderful about that brain of yours. Your personality might also change. There’s a slight chance you could lose all of your memory.”
“All of it?”
“’Course, if that happened you wouldn’t know it. Your memory of having a memory would be gone.”
“Like being born again with a brand-new mind,” I said. “Like being transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
He blinked. “Yes, like that. Those are religious terms that express a process of spiritual awakening. You remember that from Eden? Doesn’t sound like something Simon would have taught.”
I didn’t know where I got the thoughts. Most of what Simon h
ad taught in Eden was now foggy to me. For all I knew, Simon wasn’t even real. No, that was going too far. Or was it?
Confusion swirled through my mind whenever I tried to think about what was or wasn’t real relating to Project Eden.
“Maybe,” I said. “Either way, I’m okay with it. As long as you think I’ll be safe. When?”
He hesitated. “They’re prepping now.”
I stood up. “Now? Tonight?”
“Tonight. It’s why you haven’t eaten. Better on an empty stomach.”
My stomach began to do flip-flops. But that was just my brain as well.
“Okay,” I said.
STEVE PACED in the control room, chin in his hand, staring through the glass at the Memory Editing Protocol scanner. Similar to old CAT scan machines in its dimension and positioning, but the MEP connected directly to the subject’s skull at thirty-seven points. Rachelle lay sedated on her back, head already wired, MEP in place.
The tech, Sandra, spoke into her wireless headpiece. “Check electrodes seven and eight, Charlene? I’m getting a calibration error on the fourth array.”
Charlene pushed a button and the MEP whirred, pulling back from Rachelle’s head to grant access. Charlene flipped a switch that engaged recalibration. A magnetically charged fluid, Diosomium, had been intravenously administered to Rachelle an hour earlier. The MEP had already coaxed the marking fluid into every neural connection in her brain. One of the monitors displayed a perfect map of that brain, at least what could be seen by a human eye.
The quantum computer saw far more—all of the 100 billion neurons that made up the average human brain. In Rachelle’s case, 112.4655 billion neurons, according to the screen. Each neuron was now isolated and could be manipulated.
“Readings are right on my end,” Charlene said. “You?”
“Stabilized.”
The machine whirred again and Rachelle’s body slid back into position.
“I think that does it.” Sandra glanced up at Steve. “We’re ready when you are.”
“I’m never ready.”
“Sir?”
He took a deep breath. If not for Rachelle, he would have left DARPA as he’d planned after Eden’s collapse. But he saw clearly during that first week that without a guardian, she wouldn’t stand a chance. If the MEP successfully wiped her mind as designed, he would build it back up with her, step by step, this time without any deception. She deserved at least that much.