Wake the Dead

by Victoria Buck

  “Good, son. Don’t be afraid.”

  “How did they do that?” Chase asked. “And where did they go? Dad, this is considerably more bizarre than the other dreams. I don’t know what to make of it.” Chase turned to his father. But he was gone.

  “Dad?” Chase spun around to look inside the house. It was gone too. He looked back to the field, but there was only the movie screen, dull and lifeless. Just two numbers remained there like some final cryptic symbol at the end of the show. 32-7. Then he was blind. He fell backward onto the bed and wept himself to sleep.

  ****

  “Do you understand, Charles?” The darkness remained when the voice woke him. Chase didn’t understand at all, but he couldn’t answer. He had no right to speak to his Maker. He buried his face in the sheets.

  The voice didn’t push Chase for an answer. But He said something else.

  “You are still Mine.”

  37

  Even before he opened his eyes, Chase knew by the parched air that he was back in the desert. Every muscle in his body protested consciousness. Two numbers rolled through his mind as clear as the date of his own birth. Everything else was a mix of memories and images he was sure he’d never actually witnessed. The room was dark, but the Picasso filled his vision. His enhanced hearing picked up Fiender’s voice, but he couldn’t understand what the doctor said. “Hey, Robert, or somebody. I’m awake. Come in here, and tell me what’s going on.” No one came. Chase drifted back into sleep. When he woke again, sunlight filled the room. “Somebody…I’m hungry and I want to know what’s happening.”

  Half an hour must have passed. Chase had no idea what time it was. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “There’s no clock in me.” He began to scan the exoself for information. But all he found was his own limited intelligence.

  “What’s going on?” He said it loud enough to be heard, even if no one was monitoring the COP.

  The door slid open, and Fiender walked through. He looked a mess—unshaven, his hair knotted. His clothes showed as many wrinkles as his face.

  “Son, you’re awake.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m so glad.” He barely smiled.

  “I’ve been awake a couple of times. Why didn’t somebody come earlier?”

  “I’m sorry.” The doctor pulled an old-fashioned penlight from his pocket and flashed it into Chase’s eyes. “I didn’t hear you until just now.”

  “So turn on the COP, Robert. And tell me what’s going on. Why are we back in the desert?”

  “Do you have any pain, son?”

  “No, I don’t have any pain. Answer me.”

  “I brought you here for some re-augmentation.”

  Chase pulled up on his elbows. Pain shot through his shoulders, but he said nothing about it. He noticed the IV in his left forearm. “Explain.”

  “Do you remember the show?”

  “Yes.” He dropped onto the pillow and covered his eyes with his hand. “I’m sorry. I tried, Robert. I tried to play along like I was fully in support of the whole thing and under the control of the NP. But it was all so ridiculous.” He looked at the doctor. “I lost my temper.”

  “The network feels you are not viable. Their experiment has failed.” Robert rubbed his face. “I’m the failure.”

  “No, you’re not. You could have programmed me to be exactly what they wanted. Undermining their plans doesn’t make you a failure. It makes you an honorable man.”

  Robert brought his hands over his face, and his shoulders shook as though he quietly laughed. Or maybe he cried. Then he balled his fists and rested them on the bed. “How can you say that? I loaded you with all sorts of experimental programs when the only thing I was sure of was the organs I made. That’s all I wanted to do, Chase. But they convinced me to charge into the future, and I completely remade you.”

  “I’m not blaming you.” Chase covered the old man’s hand with his. “Tell me what’s left in me that still works. What happens now?”

  “Everything is still there—the organs, of course, and the sensors and processors. The simpler systems still function. The hearing enhancers and the night vision and strength sensors are all in working order for now, just as the heart and lungs and the other organs. Even the Wilberton is still operational.”

  “What about the systems relying on outside programming and the information trails in the exoself?”

  “Wiped clean. The COP is gone, and the data bank.”

  “You did that? Robert, we talked about this.”

  “My team at SynVue Estate did it. I only observed. All they had to do was delete some code and everything was lost. I couldn’t stop them from following their orders.”

  “Then they sent me here with you for some re-working?” Chase had a sick feeling in his stomach.

  “I asked if I could bring you back to my own laboratory to remove the internal devices. I told them it would be easier. Of course, I had to bring the team with me. The network insisted.”

  “You’re going to pull out my insides? So, by re-augmentation, you mean dis-augmentation. Robert, I’ll die.”

  “No, son, we will only remove the sensors and processors. The organs are yours to keep. You won’t die.”

  “Well, thanks for not ripping out my heart. Never liked being a superhero anyway.” Chase envisioned the open field under the blue sky—a place he’d never been. He shuddered. “But I have a feeling I’m coming out of this with all my new parts in working order.”

  “You have a feeling? Have you been off talking to God again?” The doctor walked to the window and stood with his back to Chase.

  “Yes, Robert, I think I have.”

  “Must have happened before the code deletion. You should be thinking clearer now.”

  Chase pulled himself up again. “Why do I feel like I’ve been flat on my back for a week?”

  The doctor turned around and came to the bedside. “You are in pain, aren’t you?”

  “A little. How long have I been out?”

  “Ten days. They programmed you to remain unconscious until the surgeries were complete, but I reset the sensor to wake you up before the extractions.”

  “Why did you do that, Robert?”

  “I thought you should know what’s going on. You do have rights. I’ll not go on with this as if you were a—”

  “A lab rat?” Chase sat on the edge of the bed and put his feet on the floor. “Where’s Kerstin? What’s she got to say about all this?”

  “In the Northeast Territory. She couldn’t explain to the network execs how you got so far out of control. They sent her to the Brooklyn office—the one where your friend was—to do a study on public awareness of transhumanology.”

  “A desk job?”

  “No, not exactly. She has her hands in the government’s plans, and I’m sure she’ll get plenty of recognition for it eventually. But they took away her show, and she’s lost the prestige she earned as a GV producer.”

  “I bet she loved that. She doesn’t know you’re the one responsible for my lack of compliance, does she?”

  “No, Chase. You’re the only one who knows.” He bowed his head. “But everyone knows the whole plan for practical augmentation was a failure. The network executives, the government higher ups, even the fans didn’t get what they expected from the new show.”

  “What happened to Larin?”

  “The network wanted him augmented—he told the audience it had already been done. But he took off. He’s gone rogue.”

  “He’s smarter than I thought,” Chase said. “Nobody blames you for any of this?”

  “As of yet, no. The science is still evolving, that’s all. And this was just a misstep in the process. That’s what they all think.”

  “So, not only did you screw up the plans of the network and the government, you covered your tracks. Pretty good for an old man. Let’s see if you can do it again.”

  The doctor looked up, his bushy brows rising. “Who are you calling an old man?”

  38
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  While Chase devoured a shrimp salad, Robert explained what had been decided by the other doctors. Young Jack Bentley and the rest of them showed little interest in what Robert had done with the subject of his failed government experiment.

  “They told me to get the gadgets out of you, file my report with the WR, and send you back to Chicago. Minus the super powers, of course.” The doctor folded his arms and paced. “They’re busy with the military applications. They don’t care what I do with my game show host—that’s what they said.”

  “Do you believe them?” Chase asked.

  “Why would they lie?”

  “To catch you. Maybe the network execs are suspicious. I’m pretty sure Kerstin was.”

  “Catch me doing what? I’m not going to do anything other than what they expect.”

  Chase pushed the lunch tray aside on the bed and stood to his feet. “Of course you are.”

  Robert shook his head. “No, son, I’m pulling out everything but the organs. And you are going home.”

  “Home to what? What are they going to do with me? Reassignment?”

  “Well, why not? People still admire the man you were. Maybe they’ll revive Change Your Life.”

  “Come on, Robert, that will never happen, and you know it.”

  “Chase, what do you expect me to do?”

  “I need a data bank. And I might need some other things. Can you do that without reactivating the COP?”

  “No, Chase.”

  “Sure you can—you’re my doctor. You made me, didn’t you?”

  “This is what you want? I’ve done enough damage already.”

  “It has to be,” Chase said.

  “What do you have planned? Will you exact revenge on the people who did this to you?”

  Chase sat on the edge of the bed. “That never entered my mind.”

  “But you must despise us. All of us.”

  “No.” He stood and walked to Robert’s side.

  “Then you must like being superior. A superman.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then why, Chase?”

  He smiled. “You can do it, can’t you? You can put the exoself back.”

  “It isn’t gone, Chase. Not really. The receptors are built into the processors and sensors. As long as they are in place, it’s simply a matter of reprogramming.”

  “Then let’s do it, Robert.” He flung open the closet door, looking for something to wear besides the drafty hospital garb.

  “Slow down, son. If you’re leaving this room, you’ll have to go on a gurney, unconscious.”

  “You’re right. We don’t want the others to get suspicious. Are they in the main lab?”

  “I didn’t say I was willing to help you with this foolish plan. But, no, they’re in the rear of the compound, in the research lab. Regardless, they think you’re still unconscious, and if you’re leaving this room, that’s the way you need to go out. You can’t go walking into the operating room.”

  He briefly wondered if the doctor might put him under and go through with the original plan. But he had to trust him. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Wheel me over there and put the stuff back. Will you do it?”

  “Yes. I’ll do it. But why?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me.”

  “I have to help people,” Chase said.

  “Why?”

  “My father said so.”

  The doctor wouldn’t understand. How could he? Chase didn’t understand.

  “Robert, I need to be able to know when S-drones are in any particular area. Can you do that?”

  “S-drones—you mean the small drones developed a few years back?”

  “I need access to deployment orders. If they’re going on a hunt, I want to know.”

  “They’re just little spy planes. Are you going to work for our enemies, Chase?”

  “S-drones armed with weapons are killing unsuspecting citizens who’ve chosen a life apart from the WR.”

  “Who is doing this?” Robert asked.

  “The WR’s doing it.”

  “You’re going rogue, aren’t you, son?”

  “You bet I am.”

  “I don’t believe the WR would kill dissenters. They imprison them, yes, and soon, augmentation.”

  “They won’t waste the money. They’ll just kill them.”

  They stayed in the room with the painting, Science and Charity, for the rest of the day and into the night. No one came to ask about the doctor’s plans. The staff of the Helgen Institute didn’t seem to care what went on between the genius doctor and his unhooked, short-lived sensation.

  They talked, but the Underground Church was not mentioned. Nor Mel, nor the mother Chase had not spoken to in months. Except for that once, perhaps, when she disconnected the call. He pictured her walking with Mel, arm in arm, in the field under the blue sky. Maybe he was crazy from all the programming and augmenting.

  But he wasn’t crazy. It was a real place. And he would find it, and his mother, and Mel.

  “Son, I fear you’ve lost your mind. All of the things I did to you—it’s no wonder. And now you’re pulling me into your madness.” Robert was on the settee across from the bed. “But I’ll come along into your mad world. I’ll do what you want.”

  “Then you can do it? You can add a program to help me track S-drones?”

  The doctor nodded. “What else?”

  “There were things in the exoself that I never accessed. Can you help me find them, even if you’re not the one who put them there?”

  “Only a few people fed data into the exoself, and I supervised.”

  “I told you before that Mel put things in me—in the exoself—about her organization. I need that information.”

  “I can’t believe she could do that. But if she did, it would work the same way I taught you to play tricks with the COP. You’d simply have to know which processor, which factor, to activate. There would be a code. But there is nothing that I didn’t put there, or at least authorize.”

  “Let’s get some sleep,” Chase said. “Tomorrow, you’re not doing what you’ve been told to do. Again. And I’m going rogue.”

  39

  Chase knew when the doctor told him it was all a matter of finding the code that he already had what he needed. Patty told him he could access Mel’s information trail if he could figure out how. This had to be it—Mel’s gateway to the secrets she’d hidden in the exoself. He slept little that night. How did the code end up in his dreams, or whatever they were? He remembered the voice’s last words.

  “You are still mine.”

  He concentrated on the code, sparking the thirty-second processor and pulling the seventh factor. But he was void of the exoself. Nothing happened.

  The doctor came in the morning with a gurney and a solution bag. “What’s the drip for, Robert? Do you really need to knock me out to reprogram me?”

  “We discussed this. Someone might notice if you’re conscious. I have to put you under.”

  “Who’s going to know? If the team is not assisting or observing, just put the bag on the gurney pole. Don’t put the needle in me. I want to review the programs as they feed into the exoself.” Chase stretched out on the gurney. “And I don’t want to be slowed down by sedatives. I’m getting out of here.”

  The doctor shook his head. “I don’t see how. How are you going to leave this place? Someone is bound to notice.”

  “Figure it out. Can’t you make me run fast? Or fly?”

  The doctor laughed and slapped his wrinkled forehead. “You’ve been watching too many movies.”

  Chase sat straight and grabbed Robert’s arm. “This is important. I’ve got to go.”

  “I know, son. We’ll figure out something. But it would take time to install processors in your legs to make you run fast, and I’d have to knock you out. And flying is not an option.” The doctor hooked the bag to the IV pole. “Unless you want to use a flight pack. There are some store
d in lockers in the research lab. Of course, your phobia might be a problem.”

  “I think I can do it—the flight pack, I mean. Flying doesn’t seem so scary anymore. But wouldn’t there be a tracking device? They all have one.”

  “Have you ever used a flight pack, son?”

  “No.”

  “You’re right about the tracking device, but I could disable it. You’d have to learn how to use the thing. You can’t just snap it on and start flying. And you’re afraid to fly.”

  “Then program me.”

  “I told you before that I can’t program away a phobia,” Robert said.

  “I said I can handle it. And you can give the exoself a flying lesson. Augmentation means people can gain years of education in only a few hours—remember? So give me some education. It can’t take more than a few minutes to learn to use a flight pack.”

  “The educational programs haven’t even been tested yet.”

  “So who better to try them out on?”

  The doctor mumbled and turned to the door as Chase lay back and pulled the sheet to his neck. The door slid open, and Robert pushed the gurney into the hall.

  “Will you do it or not? Will you plug me into a flight pack instructor?”

  “Yes, yes. I’ll do it. Now close your eyes and be still,” Robert said. “I’ve set the cameras in the compound to show the next ten minutes as the last ten minutes, much like I taught you to do with the COP. No one will see us making this trek to the lab. Unless someone is outside, that is. But no one will be outside. They’ll use the tunnels.”

  “This place has tunnels between the buildings?”

  “Yes. If the other doctors leave the rear building to come to their rooms in the guest quarters, or to my laboratory, they will use the tunnels.”

  “So we’ll stay up top. I get it,” Chase said. “Robert?”

  “Yes, son.”

  “The last time we were here, when you were about to install the NP, you told me there was code to override the system.”