‘Where am I?’ she asked, emerging on the other side into the living room of a strange house.
‘You’re home,’ replied Lucy. ‘That is all that matters.’
‘Where is home?’
Emmy turned to find that Lucy was not actually looking at her. The other woman’s eyes were instead drawn to a far corner of the room where an old man was sitting in an armchair. Emmy did not recognise him at first, but when his face finally registered, she had to do a double take. Lucy did not look much different to when they had briefly known each other. This man, on the other hand, looked completely different to the self image he had projected back in Jackson’s Hill. He looked so much older – weaker.
‘My dear Lucy,’ the man said, ‘I know you mean well, but this is your home. What can a sick old man possibly do but make a terrible burden of himself?’
‘You will never be a burden and the sickness is only temporary,’ Lucy assured him. ‘You’ll be better in no time at all. When you are, we can finally go on that trip you always promised me.’
‘King’s Canyon?’
‘King’s Canyon, Uluru, Alice springs – I want to see it all. We can camp out every night. It’ll be perfect; like it used to be when I was a kid.’
The man’s face dropped, though he tried his best to disguise it behind a smile. It was obvious that he wanted to believe her, but his eyes confirmed that this was not so. Realising she was as inconsequential to the scene as the flowers on the mantelpiece, Emmy took her focus off the father and daughter in order to take a closer look around the room.
It was a home, but it was not homely. The furnishings were sparse and there was no apparent theme tying the room’s decor together. One red leather chair here and another brown fabric one there were equally incongruous to the floral couch. The walls had been painted white – a base layer, awaiting the finishing touches for God knows how long.
Emmy passed into the kitchen. Children’s drawings were stuck to the fridge with magnets. “to miss sky – the wurlds bestest teecher” was scrawled in crayon under a picture of a twelve fingered, three eyed, yellow haired stick figure. Emmy chuckled at the irony before extending her perusal to the sink, which was full of coffee stained mugs, but contained no pots or pans used in food preparation. A look in the fridge explained why. It was filled with microwavable ready meals.
A torn brown envelope and a letter with a hospital letterhead were on the kitchen table. The letter was dated July the thirteenth. Mr Skye was scheduled to begin chemotherapy treatment for his cancer six weeks after this date. That explained how his appearance differed so much from the gaunt, sickly old man Emmy had briefly glimpsed in the field that night. Just thinking of the misery that lay ahead for this devoted father and daughter filled the scientist with abject sorrow.
The walls around trembled. It was not the violent shake of an earthquake, but more like the flicker of a failing television signal. This reality was fading. The sudden swelling of emotion was triggering Emmy’s exit strategy. She needed to focus – to clear her head.
Returning to the living room, she went straight to Lucy and put her hand on the woman’s shoulder. In an instant she was back in the never ending expanse that was like Grand Central Station to a single life. This time she was more discerning in her actions. She searched all of the faces, looking for the one that matched Lucy on her final day. When she reached out, she was at once carried back to the observatory in Jackson’s Hill. The general was there, just hours from facing his painful demise at the hands of Emmy’s grandfather. His lackeys were roughly manhandling Lucy into the projection chamber of the original astral unit.
Oddly, this time Emmy felt no emotion at all. A sphere of liquid nitrogen had replaced her heart. There was nothing that she could do the first time she had been in this situation and there was nothing she could do now she was reliving it. Everything was exactly as she remembered it. The same cruel detachment of the army personnel. The same arrogance in the general’s gait. What she would give to go back to that place for real and take the power of the tulpa with her. Not a hundred soldiers, not even Jackson Fox himself could stop her from changing Lucy’s fate in that instance. A fate which she was about to have confirmed beyond any doubt.
‘What do I do?’ Lucy anxiously called out from the chamber.
‘Just relax,’ Emmy had replied. ‘Whatever happens, just stay calm and concentrate on your breathing. The most likely outcome is that nothing will happen. These idiots do not understand the discipline it takes to operate this equipment.’
Just before the unqualified army technician turned the dial, Emmy – the real Emmy, moved to the projection chamber. As Lucy’s consciousness was launched into the unknown, she latched onto it. She held on as they both were propelled far into space. After just seconds, the momentum was reversed and they were coming back down to Earth. With the planet in sight everything changed. There was a flash beneath them and Lucy’s cord was cut.
Her father’s spirit was now with them. He reached out and tenderly ran the back of his forefinger down his daughter’s cheek. Then with a tear in his eye, perhaps knowing that she faced certain death if she returned, he placed both his arms around her and squeezed her body tight against his own. The portal opened as Emmy knew that it would. With bated breath, she followed them through.
***
Constance was afraid. Without Emmy she had no way of getting back home. The two scientists had made their illicit journey on a Friday evening. With Charlie not due back in the lab until Monday morning (assuming he recovered from his illness) she could be trapped for days. Given the extremes of time dilation, days in the real world could quite feasibly amount to years in this unnatural realm.
She was left with no option but to try and see if she could make it back by her own wits. She had to do something. Being in that field was starting to creep her out. Lucy was talking to herself and some shifty looking marsupials were skirting the peripherals.
Emmy had vanished by making contact with Lucy, but Constance thought that her own way out lay within herself. She closed her eyes, attempting to relax into a trance the same as she would at the beginning of an astral trip.
The shift in location was not instantly apparent. Sensations were dulled in this place, preventing her from feeling any change in temperature or air pressure. When she opened her eyes, however, she was no longer outside in the field. She was back in the laboratory.
I did it, she thought to herself. I made it back and without Emmy’s help too. So superior must my intellect be to have succeeded where hers did not!
She slid out of her projection pod and walked across to the other, which held Emmy. Abort buttons were built into both the main command console and the side of the pods. Given that this particular projection was running on a hacked program via the sleeping scientist’s laptop, this effectively left just the pod abort button as an option. Constance pressed it but to no avail.
She tried again.
Nothing.
Attempting to physically disturb an astral traveller on a journey held too many risks so she instead went to the laptop. When she got to it, the screen was frozen and none of the commands worked. Without deliberating too long, she reached around and pulled the cable connecting the device to the main network. There was no change. Next she tried pulling the power cable, but again it had no effect whatsoever.
She closed her eyes to try and come up with another plan and when she opened them she noticed that both cables had mysteriously been reconnected.
How was this even possible? Then a terrible thought occurred to her - what if she was still astral travelling?
Her eyes searched the interior of the laboratory for clues. The first was the wall clock. Like the laptop, it too had frozen. She then went to Charlie’s desk. He always kept an hourglass on it, which was his version of a do not disturb notice. Constance flipped it over, but not a single grain of sand moved.
The final test was the one that most filled her with dread. She slowly approached
her own astral pod.
It was not empty.
She instantly recognised the lower half of the person that was protruding from within the chamber. She recognised it because it was clad in exactly the same clothes as she was.
Think, Constance, think.
The only option she had left was to copy Emmy’s actions from earlier, but on the body of herself rather than Lucy. She reached out and firmly pressed her hand down on her exterior body’s shin.
There followed a strong pull on every atom of her being and then the laboratory disappeared leaving her suspended in an open void. Slowly at first, but then with increasing frequency, figures emerged all around her. They converged from every side and they all had one thing in common. They all were her. They all were Constance.
Just seeing each face she knew exactly where it belonged. Her first day at school, her graduation, her wedding day – each ghost from the past told a story. Her story. She was inside her own living autobiography. With just a touch she could choose any moment from her past and instantly relive it at leisure. For the first time she allowed herself to entertain a thought she had previously gone to great lengths to suppress.
Was this heaven?
***
Emmy found herself back at Grand Central Lucy. It was like when a dvd runs to the end and returns to the navigation menu. Lucinda Skye did not exist beyond the events at Jackson’s Hill. She was dead. Kaput. No more. Emmy now had all of the information she needed. It was time to go home.
Finding her way back was easier than it had ever been. The word she had set as the trigger was on her lips. All she had to do was say it and her journey would be over. Not just this astral leap, but the road her life had taken for longer than she cared to think about. Saying it would signal the beginning of a new chapter in her life.
She looked into the eyes of the woman she loved one last time before allowing the words to leave her lips.
‘Goodbye.’
Chapter 13
‘What happened?’ asked Constance.
‘We’re home,’ replied Emmy. ‘The mission’s over. I found what I was looking for.’
She exited the projection chamber to go and pack away her laptop. Constance followed, closely behind.
‘This isn’t over,’ said the older scientist. ‘If anything, it’s only just beginning. That place – it was incredible. My entire life was there just waiting to be relived.’
Emmy stopped what she was doing and turned to face her lab partner.
‘Relived – to what ends? Wasn’t the first time enough for you? That place was nothing but memories. Some things are supposed to be buried.’
‘Surely you don’t mean that. It would be crazy not to take this opportunity. Think of what we can learn.’
‘I’ve learned enough. Don’t you see? Now there’s nothing to stop them from turning off the town’s life support. Actually, when I come to think of it, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t. We now know that consciousness cannot exist beyond death. Those people are beyond hope.’
‘That may be so and I’m truly sorry for your loss. You have to realise, though, that this goes far deeper than Jackson’s Hill. The information we have access to is beyond imagining.’
‘No. I finally understand Charlie’s position on this matter. What we’re dealing with has the potential to turn into Pandora’s Box. We must be cautious moving forward. I say we keep a lid on this for the time being, whilst we pursue other applications of the technology. If you’re willing to cooperate, I won’t block you from taking part in future experiments.’
Emmy could see the carrot was working. Constance’s mood visibly lifted with the promise of gaining approval to use the astral technology on a regular basis. With little persuasion required, the two women agreed to keep their discovery quiet before going their separate ways for the evening.
***
It was late when Emmy got back to her apartment. She went straight to the kitchenette and made a mug of tea. Herbal had always been her favourite, but since Tibet she had acquired a taste for the stronger, more traditional green brews over the novelty westernised flavours. As she placed the mug down on the tabletop to cool, she sensed movement in the corner of the room.
‘If you’ve come to gloat, don’t bother,’ she said. ‘After today, you’ve never felt less real to me.’
‘You don’t mean that,’ replied the tulpa, stepping out from the shadows. ‘After what you learned today, I think you need me more than ever. I’m all that’s left of Lucy.’
Emmy balled her fists, her fingernails digging into the soft flesh of her palms. Nothing could get under her skin quite like her own subconscious.
‘All that is left of Lucy is an inanimate shell lying on a hospital bed.’
The tulpa narrowed its eyes.
‘Her body is still alive – technically. It’s not like you to give up hope so quickly.’
‘What hope?’ Emmy knew better than to be drawn into arguing with her alter ego, but sometimes she was unable to help herself. ‘The spark is gone. Her essence, her energy has gone. She’s now just a set of memories being replayed over and over on some distant star.’
‘You’re forgetting that memory is also part of a physical system. There’s still a hard copy of her personality, her true essence, contained within the brain of her comatose body. All it needs is a spark to reignite it.’
‘That spark has been extinguished. It was annihilated when she crossed over. I can’t bring it back.’
The tulpa closed the gap between them and placed one of its hands on Emmy’s upper arm stroking her sensuously. It knew how to manipulate her. The reason she kept allowing it back into her life was as much for the physical comfort it offered as the emotional. Even if she was merely pleasuring herself, it was an exquisitely deceptive form of masturbation.
‘Maybe it’s not where the spark comes from that is important,’ said the tulpa. ‘Maybe it’s just the fact that there is a spark at all that counts.’
Emmy noticed a further change in the eyes of the tulpa as a new thought occurred to her. Whatever she knew – it knew.
‘You’re not seriously suggesting what I think you are, are you?’ she asked.
‘If you’re asking me,’ replied the tulpa, ‘then you already know the answer.’
Chapter 14
Lucas Black had always known he would become a policeman. It was encoded in his genes. His family had occupied the police station at Jackson’s Hill for three generations. A calling that began with his grandfather, Donovan Black, back when the town was still named Littleview. The mantle was then taken up by his father, Douglas, before finally coming to rest with him.
There were times when he had turned to his forebears, not so much for advice (there was nothing new they could tell him that he had not heard before), but because it comforted him. It reassured him. It made him feel a part of something important. He was the last of an honourable line. There would be no more to follow. Jackson’s Hill, was, quite literally, a ghost town.
Crime no longer existed in this place. Each day was the same as the last and the last was the same as the next. Of course, nobody was aware of this temporal peculiarity apart from Lucas. It was the perfect system. It was his system. And it was designed to last forever. Since the arrival of Jimmy Johnson, Lucas was beginning to wonder if forever may not be quite so long as he had always feared.
The boy had never truly belonged. Even in the old days, before the sky had fallen in. If there was trouble in the town then rest assured, Jimmy, though rarely the direct cause, would always be at the centre of it. When the toxic by-product of the astral experiments reached the town, Jimmy had been the first to display symptoms. Yet strangely, he was also the last to die from it.
If it had been the radiation that killed him, that is.
By Lucas’ reckoning, only Emmy and Charlie now remained. He wondered what part they played, if any, in the timing of the boy’s demise. Would they also be soon to turn up in this ghost town? Probably
not, he reasoned. During the last interaction he had with the scientists, they confirmed that they themselves were not infected. They both got off lightly so far as he was concerned.
At least Jimmy seemed to be settling in well. As it always was, the days soon turned to weeks, the weeks to months, and the months to years. Nobody saw the time pass apart from Lucas. He watched, he waited and if needs required it, he intervened. All the while he kept wondering if Jimmy really would be the last.
***
Lucy was scheduled to be turned off first. Emmy had requested to be the one to perform the procedure, but Charlie stopped short of letting her do it alone. He reverted to the corporate stance that was beginning to define his actions more and more these days. For legal reasons, he told her that there had to be a registered physician and a member of the company’s legal team present.
The mood in the room was sombre, but also clinical. A little too clinical for Emmy’s liking. She thought Lucy deserved better than this. It was not a dignified way to die, but then again, technically her death had already occurred more than three years earlier. This was merely a belated encore.
‘Do you want to say anything?’ asked Charlie. ‘You know, before you, er, um...’
He shifted uncomfortably while grasping for his words but it was not necessary for him to finish. Emmy shook her head. What was there to be said? As she looked around all she saw were the faces of people who had never known Lucy. To them she was just another statistic. Another report to be filed away, never to be looked at again. Her life meant nothing to them.
‘Okay then,’ Charlie continued. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’
Rather than looking at the girl, everyone present focused on the monitor displaying her heart rate. As Emmy pulled the plug, the intermittent staccato blips gave way to a constant trill as the display flat-lined.
The doctor placed his fingers against the patient’s jugular in order to confirm that the machine was accurate. Once satisfied, he grasped the corners of a sheet that covered the lower portion of Lucy’s body and folded it over her head.
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