The next morning, no amount of coffee could keep Bradburn from yawning. After reading the questions Agent Cooper had given him, after seeing websites disappear in front of his eyes, he hadn’t been able to sleep. It didn’t help that his wife was snoring by the time he got home. Without her, he didn’t have anyone he could talk to about what had happened. Instead, he had remained awake, thinking about Agent Cooper, the Tyranny, and the three new patients.
Those were the things he tried to keep his focus on. However, he couldn’t help but let other thoughts creep in: the questions he was supposed to ask each man, accounts of people seeing a flash of light above Burnley Park and of a man falling out of the sky, websites being there one moment and then not being there the next moment.
None of it made sense. Why would the Tyranny go to the trouble of erasing something so unrealistic as a man falling out of the sky? Weren’t there more important things for them to focus on?
One idea kept sneaking into his thoughts. It seemed absurd, but it was the only answer he could come up with. Based on the Tyranny’s own questions, based on the attention they were giving these three new patients, only one explanation made sense: time travel was possible. Not only that, but the Tyranny didn’t want anyone to know about it. Instead, they wanted to capture the individual who had fallen out of the sky. And that meant the Tyranny wasn’t behind the event. If it wasn’t them, there was only one other group who could have been responsible. The Thinkers.
Do you believe in time travel?
Is the world a better place today than it was a hundred years ago?
If you could go back in time and change any event, what would you change?
The Thinkers had figured out time travel. And they were doing it, Bradburn guessed, so they could go back in time and make the world a better place. It all led to one conclusion: one of his three new patients wasn’t from this time but was from some point in the future.
It seemed crazy. Every bit of his analytical, scientific mind told him it wasn’t possible. People didn’t just fall out of the sky. Time travel certainly wasn’t real.
And yet the Tyranny thought it was, and the Tyranny controlled what people knew. He began to have the sneaking suspicion that maybe he knew less about what was happening around him than he realized.
These were the things he had thought about all night, and also when he finally got out of bed in the morning without having slept a minute. They were the things he thought about when he set up the camera according to Cooper’s directions. And they were the things he thought about as he met with each new patient for the first time, asking each man the questions he had been given. When the interviews were over, he went back to his office, closed the door, and thought about it some more.
Almost immediately, though, his door opened. Agent Cooper was there. Bradburn blinked over and over, unsure if he had fallen asleep or if Cooper had coincidently been near the hospital at that exact moment. Or, knowing the Tyranny, maybe it hadn’t been a coincidence at all. Maybe one of the Tyranny’s AeroCams had alerted the agent that Bradburn had finished his interviews and was returning to his office. Or maybe someone on his staff was paid by the Tyranny to report everything that happened at the hospital. With the Tyranny, there was no telling how much they knew or the measures they would go to get the parts they didn’t know.
“Doctor,” Agent Cooper said, sitting down without waiting for an invitation.
“Agent Cooper, nice to see you again.”
Cooper snorted, knowing no one looked forward to seeing him appear in their doorway while he was wearing the black suit of the Tyranny.
“How’d it go?” Cooper said.
“Fine. It went fine. I did everything the way your instructions asked.”
Cooper waved away the remark, seemingly more interested in Bradburn than in watching the taped interviews.
“Anything you want to say?” the agent asked.
“Uh,” Bradburn said, not sure what Cooper was looking for. “They all seemed normal enough. For mental patients, that is.” And then he gave a soft laugh but quickly stopped when he saw the agent wasn’t entertained in the least.
“Anything else you want to mention?”
Cooper asked the question from behind sunglasses he still hadn’t taken off and that covered any sense of emotion the man might otherwise have had.
“Uh, well, none of them seemed dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“Yes,” Bradburn said, thinking he had stumbled upon something the agent might approve of. “Not a danger to themselves, nor to others.”
“To others?”
“Well, yes,” Bradburn said, no longer feeling the urge to yawn, feeling as if he couldn’t possibly be more alert and awake. “I mean, I wouldn’t feel uneasy about one of my nurses being in the same room with them, unattended.” He didn’t want to say anything else, but when Agent Cooper only stared at him, he added, “It’s hard to imagine one of them may be a Thinker.”
The Tyranny’s man leaned forward. With the thumb and index finger of one hand, he took off his sunglasses.
“Is it hard to imagine?” Cooper asked.
“Yes?” Bradburn said, but it came out as more of a question that an answer.
“Thinkers would destroy this country if they could. They would do away with the Tyranny. Change our entire way of life.”
“Yes.”
“They hide in the shadows because they’re radicals.”
“Yes,” Bradburn said again, even though everyone had heard the horror stories of what the Tyranny did with people it didn’t like, knew it was more sensible to hide than be tortured.
“But then again,” Cooper said, “I’m speaking to someone who also likes to hide things. Am I right?”
At that exact moment, another AeroCam hovered past the window of Dr. Bradburn’s office.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Bradburn tried to smile—a way of showing the agent that this must all be some sort of mistake. His face betrayed him, though, and instead of looking happy, he could hear the fear in his voice. The fear that must also be displayed in his eyes and on his mouth.
“You don’t like to hide things? I guess you just didn’t feel like telling me you did some extra curricular research into your new patients, right?” The agent shook his head in disappointment. “I gave you a chance. I asked if you had anything you wanted to tell me.”
“I don’t... I—”
Cooper shook his head again and Bradburn understood that he was supposed to stop talking.
“Did you read anything interesting last night?”
“Last night?”
“Don’t make me ask you again,” Agent Cooper said.
“I... read about a flash of light... in Burnley Park.”
“Is that all?”
“And a man falling out of the light.”
“And?”
“And he climbed down from a tree and disappeared.”
For a few seconds, Agent Cooper did nothing but stare at the doctor. Just when Bradburn thought the man from the Tyranny was going to reach across the desk, grab him by the neck, and strangle him to death, he was surprised by a completely different reaction. Cooper burst out laughing. He didn’t just smile or give a polite grin. He laughed as if he were listening to a comedian’s best material.
“Do you hear yourself?” the agent said. “You sound absolutely crazy. A flash of light? A man falling out of the sky? That’s hilarious!” Then, just as quickly, Cooper stopped laughing, rested his chin on a closed fist, and in a completely emotionless voice, said, “It is crazy, right?”
“Of course,” Bradburn said. “Of course it is.”
“Good. And the next time someone from the Tyranny asks you a question, don’t try to hide anything.”
“Of course not. Rules are rules.”
“Exactly. Now then, let’s start watching the interviews.”
6
The Theta Patient Page 5