He wasn’t, but Dolan was clinging to that droning voice for comfort, so he nodded. Just then, the no-nonsense nurse took Dolan by the arm and led him toward the table.
She said, “Remove all of your clothing, please.”
Dolan complied, but then when standing in the cold room naked but for battle scars, he felt an even colder ball of anxiety growing in the pit of his stomach. This felt more like facing a major surgery than preparing for a typical combat mission with a team of friends. He felt goose bumps ripple up his arms and the small hairs rise along the back of his neck. This whole op was getting spookier by the minute.
“Go on, Doc,” Dolan lied. “I get it.”
Bartlett waved his arms in the air. He was clearly excited by the topic. At least someone was having fun. “A fellow named Robert Lanza argues that the theory of biocentrism proves that even death is just an illusion. Biocentrism says life creates the universe—that it is not the other way round. And what this means for this particular operation is that since space and time do not occur in any linear fashion, nothing is really the way we experience it as individuals. Our perception is actually irrelevant.”
The nurse stood waiting, her features deadpan. Dr. Bartlett smiled and shrugged. “I won’t bore you going on about the famous ‘double slit’ experiment, Snake, because I think you get the general idea.”
Dolan just stood there naked. “I’m going to travel through time?”
“Indeed you are. Suffice it to say, we at Limbus have spent many years and hundreds of billions of dollars and we finally have proven Lanza right.”
Dr. Bartlett grinned and clapped his hands. The nurse motioned for Dolan to get up on the device. He pushed the terror down and fully committed himself to the choice.
I’ve got nothing to lose, nothing but this fucked life and a bunch of bad memories. I want to forget.
“Let’s do this.”
Dolan hopped on the edge of the table. The nurse touched his chest with one palm and pushed it away from her own body. She stepped to the side and put her other arm under his back. Dolan let her guide him until he was stretched out and flat on the medical table. She placed electrodes and attached wires to his flesh like someone who’d done this before. He thought he caught a trace of sadness in her eyes but wasn’t sure.
“In essence, we are now going to drop you into the flow of time in one universe in order to change its course,” Dr. Bartlett said. “You will be rather like a small rock thrown into a big stream. What I can tell you is that in one multi-verse, and at different places, unfortunate deaths have just occurred. That’s where you come in. We want you to change the course of one particular stream so the future that results from those changes is one we deem optimal. We are not absolutely certain how many missions will be necessary. We will find that out soon by studying what happens after the first event is altered.”
None of it made real sense to Dolan. All he could think about was his steadily rising adrenaline and the thought of the one final payoff, freedom from his mental agony. He closed his eyes, controlling his tense breathing. The nurse worked busily now, efficiently securing his head, torso, arms and legs into the various straps and cups. Below him, under the table, something began to vibrate and produce a low, whirring noise. The table grew warmer, then warmer still. Soon, Dolan felt hundreds of tiny needles as they rose up, pricking his exposed skin. How far would they go? He panicked and twitched and his mouth tasted sour. He panted for air.
“What is going to happen to me, Doc?” He hated the fear in his voice.
“You will be going into combat,” Dr. Bartlett said in a whisper, now with the air of a man imparting precious secrets. “So be prepared for anything. Do your job. When you’re finished, we’ll wipe your mind clean and take away your pain, just as Recruiter Goodfellow promised.”
Dolan wondered if he could finally get some real answers, since it was all actually going down. He figured that at this point anything was worth a try. Why not come right out and ask?
“Tell me, Doc, why did they choose me?”
The machine began to click and bang and hum. The nurse stood back.
“For a variety of reasons,” Dr. Bartlett said, “including, of course, your expertise with antique weaponry and your combat experience. You are a man who has fought his way back from the abyss. That is a psychological skill we expect will come in very handy during this particular mission. Perhaps most importantly, Snake, you have one absolutely indispensable personal motivation that should see you through and bring us the result we require.”
“This hurts,” Dolan said. He grimaced.
The machine was loud and shaking around and something smelled like burning hair. The needles were moving, turning in his flesh and digging even deeper into his body. Dolan felt nauseous and woozy and had trouble concentrating on the conversation. Part of him was glad it had begun. Whatever this was, it would soon be over. The idea of having his mind swept clean was still oddly appealing, despite all the risks he’d been warned about. He liked the thought of being here but also gone forever. No more grief. No more shame…
Dr. Bartlett looked at something on the control panel. “Here we go!”
“What am I supposed to do when I get there?” Dolan asked.
Dr. Bartlett said, “Fight. Trust your instincts. Keep moving forward.”
Someone else, not the nurse, called out, “Any moment now, sir.”
“But what’s my actual assignment?” Dolan whispered.
“Save the girl.”
Dolan winced at the words. He felt as if they were mocking him at the very last second. A sickening flash of guilt ran through him. “What girl?”
Dolan tried to open his eyes again, only to find the nurse had secured something over them, some kind of metallic blindfold. He was completely blind. The countless little pinpricks steadily heated up until they fully scorched his skin. Dolan groaned. A strange new charge of energy rushed into and through his muscles and bones, flowing back and forth, like hot ocean waves were carrying him somewhere. He could no longer move his limbs. His body was twitching and jerking within the restraints. He shook like a child and pissed himself. He’d lost control of his body.
“What girl?” Dolan said again. Or thought he’d said, but now there was no sound but his breathing. No one answered him because no one was there. The world was total darkness and he sensed the enormous push and pull of unknown forces. He was drifting in the middle of nowhere, out between the stars. He’d never felt so damned alone.
Just as Dolan began to completely freak out, his vision returned. He registered not what had been there in the laboratory, but a reality existing somewhere else entirely. He was seeing from down deep in his soul, looking through a window into an unfamiliar countryside dotted with farms and cows and trees and long, winding dirt roads. The spot was verdant and the sun was just coming up in the distance. It was some other place and time, strange and yet oddly familiar. It was becoming real and rushing closer. Dolan knew it was his destination. He could smell the trees.
“What girl, damn it?” His last words to Limbus emerged in a voice that was someone else’s. It came from way down a long, empty hall and echoed from off in the distance as if filtered through electronics to sound low and robotic. Again, no one answered.
And then Dolan saw a woman in an old, sepia-tinged photograph. She seemed familiar, yet he knew he’d never seen her before. Abruptly, her features morphed into the face of different female, a much younger one. Then she became someone else entirely, but by then, his vision was too blurred to take it in. Dolan felt completely baffled and curious but the physical and psychic pain dominated everything. His conscious mind was gone. His brain spun in circles and his flesh twitched. His body felt like it was literally melting away.
Dolan screamed. His pulse raced and the fear at last completely consumed him. The last thing he heard was more like a whisper than a human voice and it seemed to come from deep within his own psyche. He could not make out the words.
Everything went dark.
*
Something bit him on the neck.
Dolan swatted at it. He felt incredibly tired. He was naked and ached all over. His body was sprawled in the dirt and grass somewhere and his face was wedged into the trunk of a tree. The earth smelled rich and dark and damp. He turned over and stared to his right. A huge metal cylinder sat nearby that contained what appeared to be the table he’d been strapped to and some mysterious electronic equipment with blue and red wires, but even as Dolan watched, the strange device became transparent and faded away. It was gone in three seconds. He was completely alone.
“Shit.”
Dolan sighed. He groaned and sat up. The morning sun spread orange fire on the eastern hills, which were dotted with what looked like white tents. Dolan brushed dirt off his body. He smelled something rank. He could hear something buzzing in his brain. He rolled over.
A corpse stared back at him.
Dolan recoiled in shock. It was just a boy barely in his teens dressed in faded and torn rags dyed a butternut color. One of his eyes and part of his face had been blown away. The buzzing sound came from the flies swarming in his skull. Maggots were already squirming in the exposed brain. Dolan tried to vomit but nothing came up. He stared. The dead body still clutched an antique .58 Springfield musket that appeared to be in near-mint condition. A long, blood-encrusted bayonet was fastened to the end of the barrel.
Stunned, Dolan shook his head to clear it and rubbed his eyes. The uniformed corpse and the old weapon were still there. So was the strange landscape. The delivery vehicle was gone. And Dolan was naked and unarmed.
Where the fuck is this?
Above him, from higher ground deeper into the squat copse of trees, came the awesome, thunderous racket of an army wakening. Dolan heard horses neighing, heavy cannon rolling along cleared dirt tracks, and men shouting and laughing and swearing and forming up into ranks. He crawled up the slope on elbows and knees, ass naked to the morning air, and peered up at the far hills. The sun broke the horizon and lit a wide battlefield already littered with rotting human and horse bodies and shattered wagons. The white tents on the slope were military. He saw huge cannons, also forming up in rows. The artillery was surrounded by men, an army in mostly blue uniforms.
The fucking Civil War?
Dolan mentally ran through the books he’d read, trying to guess where and when Limbus had dropped him. He had no time to wonder exactly how they had done it. He already knew why. They wanted him to find and protect some woman or women. And now he’d have to find a way to get the job done.
He stared upward.
The group on the ridge was definitely Union, and from the sheer size, probably one of the largest forces they’d assembled. So he was definitely somewhere in the early 1860s. Dolan thought fast. He had no sense of the size of the Confederate ranks because he was too close to take all that in. He knew nothing except that he was stuck among them. Perhaps the individual battle didn’t matter. He’d just have to perform the task and somehow escape with his life.
He slid back down into the space by the tree trunk. He reluctantly stripped the boy of his uniform. It reeked of sweat and piss and blood and gore, but it would have to do. He rubbed dirt in his hair and took the small paper cartridges of gun powder and ammo along with the tall Springfield. Dolan had once owned one. He knew he’d have to load and fire one mini-ball at a time, but at least it was rifled.
He had one move. Dolan had to become one of them or die. If he was found naked and alone by either side on the eve of battle, he’d almost certainly be hung as a deserter or a spy.
“Hell you doin’ there, son?”
Dolan spun around with the rifle up. He did not aim it. An older man wearing a sergeant’s stripes and a battered old cap stood on a mound of dirt and dead brush. He spat tobacco juice into the dirt. The sergeant squinted into the sunrise, shading his eyes with one hand, leaning on the trunk of a tree.
Dolan waited and watched. The sergeant was a sour man. He had a feral look in his squinty eyes. Someone whooped and fired a weapon and the sergeant shouted for him to shush up and wait for orders. There was nothing in his tone but a studied indifference.
“Well?”
The sergeant was staring at him now, so Dolan kept his own voice hoarse and did his level best to imitate the thick Southern accent he’d just heard. He did a pretty fair job. “I jes’ had to piss.”
“Come on, then,” the sergeant said. “Less’n you’re gonna shit too, best git goin’.”
“Comin’.”
“Wass yer name, boy?”
“They call me Snake,” Dolan said.
“Try not to get kilt, Snake.” The older man laughed and farted large.
Dolan trudged up the slope. If the sergeant had noticed the naked body below, he said nothing about it.
When they cleared the top of the mound, Dolan saw an astonishing sight, thousands of men and horses and weapons in one vast formation. His mind worked furiously. He knew the Springfield had a default sight setting of one hundred yards, but that it could be set for three or even five hundred. He’d read that the hollow-based round could cause frightful damage to the foe because it tended to tumble as it hit. If he worked hard, aiming and firing and reloading, he might get off as many as three shots per minute. Dolan prepared for combat. He fumbled at first, but managed to remember how to load the weapon. Meanwhile, the army rose to the ready. An average-sized man on a white horse rode behind them waving his hat. He gave the order.
It was time.
The men were packed incredibly close together, and Dolan knew this charge would be virtual suicide for perhaps one in four. Others would lose arms and legs due to amputation directly after the battle. These men had no medical assistance to speak of and most would get only alcohol for anesthetic, or perhaps nothing at all. Combat was a proud test of nerves to these people, and they were accustomed to suffering horrendous casualties, making charge after charge for a cause they barely understood.
Dolan studied their situation. The Union troops had the higher ground and at least as many cannons. He remembered what Limbus had ordered. He needed to find and save a girl. But there were no women here, just thousands of frightened boys and weathered, bitter old men. Dolan thought about trying to run away, but where could he go? Wouldn’t Limbus just pluck him out of the grass and send him back again? Still, perhaps they’d wipe his mind clean then, just as promised, though it would be for failing at his mission. Did it matter why, if he’d never even remember it? Wouldn’t the result be the same? No, it would matter, Dolan thought. You gave your word. And there’s a girl.
There was no more time to think about Limbus. The officers waved the troops forward. Dolan found himself surrounded by rows of scared boys and sweaty, scowling older men much like the evil sergeant, most seemingly indifferent fellows who just urged callow boys into the fray.
As the men advanced, gear and sabers and bayonets and canteens rattling, bodies all packed together and oozing primal fear, Dolan studied the landscape ahead. He knew from reading that the boys in blue would fire cannon soon, and that the effect on his brethren would be nothing less than catastrophic. He shaded his eyes as he stumbled forward. One of the boys in front of him tripped and fell and was almost trampled. Dolan spotted something through a narrow break in the ranks. He saw a small brown farmhouse perhaps fifty yards ahead. A wooden picket fence surrounded the weathered property.
There was laundry hung on a rope line out back.
Women did laundry.
The sergeant shouted something Dolan didn’t catch, and in response, the men let loose a series of terrifying, high-pitched rebel yells. They all began to jog forward. The sergeant stayed a bit behind, gleefully kicking reluctant men in the ass, always yelling and waving his arms while staying to the rear. Dolan ran forward with the house in mind. The cannon above them on the slope began to belch fire and an obscene screech filled the air above. Their advance was courageous but completely insane and ul
timately doomed to fail. The huge balls and links of chain began to fall like mortar rounds.
The explosions were deafening. Guts and body parts flew.
Blood and gore splattered Dolan’s face. The battlefield was now covered with smoke and there was chaos all around. The Springfields and pistols rattled and barked like small dogs. Terrified men paused to fire up at the ridge. They reloaded at once then ran a few dozen yards before kneeling in the stained dirt and green grass to fire uphill again. The Yankees had the high ground. It was suicide all right, and Dolan knew that better than most.
Dolan whooped and waved his rifle without firing it. He broke into a dead run, heading for the small farm with the white picket fence out back. A boy to his left followed him as if hoping to take cover there, but as Dolan watched, the top of his thin body vanished into a cloud of red mist. He’d been struck by a low-flying round from the Yankee cannon. His lower torso and legs collapsed, arteries pulsing blood into torn clods of earth.
The cannon screeched and the men screamed and the rifles belched flame.
Their ranks had already thinned when Dolan jumped the picket fence and rolled into the yard. He got up and ran for it. He passed some kind of wooden door set into a pile of dirt and rocks, hit the clothes line, shoved a white sheet out of the way, and made for the front door of the little home. He struck it with his left shoulder. When he did, the door flew off its hinges and collapsed into the small living room.
He looked up. Outside the window, Confederate soldiers raced by, firing and screaming in the thick white smoke.
Limbus, Inc. Book II Page 5