Afterimage

by Roderick Geiger

  Gladstone refused to speculate whether further study by the FDA might have prevented last month’s MRI explosion in Manzanita.

  The current research project in Eugene, funded by Gyttings-Lindstrom Inc., maker of the ill-fated Manzanita MRI machine, is aimed at finding a cause for the explosion and is under the direction of Dr. Gilbert Vrynos, a former Deverson colleague. Other members of Vrynos’ current team also worked on Deverson’s project at UC Davis.

  Twenty years ago the project known as INFX, the Instant of Neurotransmission Failure Experiments, began in a small lab building on the Davis campus, Vardell said. “Simply put, they were terminating lab animals under controlled conditions, using precision monitoring devices, in an attempt to learn more about the process of dying,” he said.

  The INFX project came under mounting pressure from religious and animal-rights’ groups, so after five years Davis administrators closed INFX. Undaunted, Dr. Deverson continued the research on his rural property in Yolo County in Central California.

  “Professor (Deverson) was making MRIs of dying rats,” said Roberto Gutierrez, longtime caretaker on the Deverson’s rural property. “Then one day he nearly blew the barn and himself off the face of the earth.” The explosion was proof, Gutierrez explained, that Deverson believed he was close to understanding the nature of life-energy.

  Over the next two years, Dr. Deverson developed a theory that life is a form of energy that exists in some kind of energy field all around us, all the time, Gutierrez said. His experiments pricked tiny holes in the field, releasing powerful blasts of energy, he said.

  “Most of his professor colleagues thought he was crazy,” said Dr. Wen Yeoh, who worked briefly with Deverson at Davis. “But none of them has yet offered a satisfactory explanation for the explosions.”

  The police investigation into Dr. Mark Deverson’s unsolved disappearance was led by Detective Harold Evans, Yolo County Sheriff’s Department, who left the department shortly thereafter and went on to establish an organization called the Ruptura Society. Among other services, the society operates a crematorium on a rural estate near Ione, California.

  Last week, EPA agents of the Criminal Investigation Division raided the Society’s Ione complex and found numerous MRI components as well as dozens of lab rats, Vardell said.

  On Sunday, weekend employees at the Gyttings-Lindstrom facility on the industrial outskirts of Eugene reported hearing and feeling a powerful mid-morning explosion from the area where Dr. Vrynos and his INFX team are conducting the MRI research.

  The company released a brief statement Monday afternoon acknowledging “a small, intentional explosion as part of the ongoing investigation.

  “The research is being conducted under highly controlled and completely safe conditions,” the statement read. “We feel we’re very close to isolating the cause of the instability. Everything we’ve learned thus far supports our contention that there’s absolutely no danger whatsoever to operating the more than 60,000 MRIs currently in use around the world.”

  Department of Defense spokespersons declined comment yesterday until DOD staff has a chance to review the data.

  Chalmais pushed the paper numbly across his desk, staring out into the early dawn, a faint glow along the forested ridges to the east. “No Senator, I have absolutely no recollection whatever of that,” he rehearsed in a slow, steady tone.

  Day 3

  Thursday

  Holiday Inn,

  Eugene, Oregon

  Ishue was moping around her room, packing slowly, half watching a re-re-run of a Bonanza episode, wondering just how on earth she’d gone from the most read journalist in America one day to nearly being fired the next.

  Ed’s instructions had been brief: “Meet Ben Vilasik at the Eugene airport at noon and hand over your car keys and then get on a plane and come home,” he’d said in one breath. “You’re back on weekends, so make sure you’re clocked in here by 9 a.m. Saturday.”

  “But Ed, I have a perfectly good explanation,” She’d said.

  “Don’t wanna hear it,” he’d replied.

  “Asshole,” she’d spit at the dial tone. So she’d missed one lousy Gyttings-Lindstrom press conference. One! So she hadn’t checked in for one lousy day. One! It couldn’t have been helped. She’d gone to Portland to lend a very distraught father some much needed moral support.

  “When are you ever gonna learn, girl,” she said, watching a freshly laundered Little Joe outdraw a trio of filthy cattle rustlers. Even the Warren thing had gone bad on her. The doctors in Portland had arranged Tyler’s transfer to the Weimer Clinic in Berkeley. Ishue had stood there on the ambulance landing, holding her coat tightly around her shoulders in the icy breeze, watching them drive away. Warren hadn’t said “I’ll call you,” or “Thanks,” or even given her a hug. Just an obligatory little wave, then he’d jumped into the ambulance and they’d sped off.

  Okay, so he had good reason to be preoccupied. His son had devolved a few million years, earned the nickname “Tarzanboy” around the ward at Legacy Samaritan. Yeah, Warren had a good excuse for practically ignoring her after she’d dropped everything, raced up there, even brought him his damn luggage. But the good excuse hadn’t made her feel any better, standing there in the cold, all alone. She’d really needed that hug.

  Maybe he was pissed because he’d seen her Deverson story. But in the few minutes they’d spent together he hadn’t mentioned seeing the piece. Couldn’t he have just said something simple like: “I saw your story, you turncoat bitch!” Then they could have dealt with it, maybe worked through it.

  Then, when she’d called Ed on her cellphone and learned about Steve “pickle-head” Vilasik, the senior city reporter taking her place as the correspondent in Eugene, she’d really gone numb.

  “The old one-two,” she’d said loudly, standing next to the Ford Fusion on the fourth floor of Legacy Hospital’s west parking structure. “Just screw me!” She’d kicked the plastic wheel cover and it had popped off, rolling noisily across the slick concrete to rest under a BMW. Oh well. It was Pickle-head’s problem now.

  She was folding her underwear and watching the parchment map of the Ponderosa burn during credits when the hotel phone sprang to life. Half afraid to pick it up for fear of more bad news, she let it ring four times. Then she lifted it gingerly with two fingers.

  “Miss Ishue?” a cool voice said. “Thank god I reached you. I’m Devon Robbins, calling you from the middle of the Indian Ocean…”

  “Oookaay,” she said. He had a ruggedly handsome accent and a sensitive voice.

  “I’m on a boat…the French oceanographic research vessel, Argyle. We read your Deverson article online, Miss Ishue. Very nicely done.”

  “Well thank you,” she said quizzically. These French sailor boys hadn’t called halfway around the world just to compliment her journalistic skills…had they?

  “This will probably seem a bit incredulous, Miss Ishue, but there’s a rather disturbing coincidence at work here that we felt needed further investigation.”

  “Uh huh?”

  “There seems to be a correlation between the research going on up there and a series of disturbances down here.”

  “Disturbances?”

  “Well, yes. Short-lived, rather violent atmospheric anomalies, which appear to be magnetic in origin. Disruptions in the core magnetosphere. We call them REMEs, Miss Ishue”

  Disruptions in the magnetosphere? Ishue dropped her underwear and scrambled for her recorder and notebook. “The acronym, Devon…what’s it mean?”

  “My colleagues picked the name,” he announced apologetically. “Robbins ElectroMagnetic Event.”

  She chuckled. “Okay. Could you explain what these things are?”

  There was a pause. “If I say any more you’ll have to promise me not to use any of it in a story.”

  Ishue covered the mouthpiece and hissed the word “Shit” out loud. Then to Devon, sweetly: “Okay. Sure. You have my word.” She grimaced, baring her po
inty eye teeth.

  “It would be irresponsible for us to alarm people on such an untested, undeveloped theory,” he explained.

  “Of course. You can trust me.”

  “Good. Eighteen days ago we experienced a powerful REME on Henrique East Island, which knocked out everything electrical at our research base. The French military thought it was the work of terrorists…”

  “I read about that…” Ishue said, unsure where this was going.

  “Yes. Miss Ishue, it happened on the same day, according to your story, as the Manzanita accident.

  “An interesting coincidence,” Ishue commented. She had resumed packing, squeezing the phone receiver awkwardly between her shoulder and ear.

  “Yes, of course. But we have evidence of one of these disturbances on the same day your professor Deverson disappeared, again according to the dates in your story.”

  “Ummm,” she said, trying in vain to mate-up her socks.

  “And then two more: on Sunday and Monday, your time. These were much smaller events, occurring over open water about 1300 kilo…745 miles south of Henrique, coinciding with Gyttings-Lindstrom running their MRI experiments in Eugene.”

  She perked up. “That is interesting. How common are these REME-things anyway?”

  “Well, that’s just it, Miss Ishue. They’re not common at all…” His voice trailed off, and for a moment she thought she’d lost the connection. “…sketchy records, mostly anecdotal accounts from fishermen…merchant traffic...strange, short-lived electrical storms, ejecta and whirlpools, all occurring in the two-or-so years before Deverson disappeared, all in the same general area, right up to the big one on the same day as Dr. Deverson’s disappearance…then none.”

  “None?”

  “Nothing for several years. Then a few years later it starts up again, 40 or more separate events right up to the present. These more recent events seem to be centered about 50 miles west of the earlier ones. Is this beginning to make any sense?”

  “Not really. Go on.”

  “Well, Ione is located about 50 miles east of Davis, correct?”

  Geographically challenged, she wasn’t sure. “Yeaaah…”

  “And isn’t Manzanita about 745 miles south of Eugene?”

  “Yeaaah…”

  “My colleagues and I agree it’s a bit too coincidental, eh? I’ve been trying to reach someone at Gyttings-Lindstrom but I can’t seem to get past the switchboard.”

  “That figures.” Good fortune for me!

  “I was hoping you might pop over there and explain the situation, tell them to contact me directly so that we can confer on this. You might suggest they suspend their experiments until we talk? Just to be on the safe side, you know.”

  “You bet,” she said excitedly. “How do I contact you?”

  “Call ship-to-shore, St. Denis, La Reunion Island. They’ll patch you to Argyle. It’s nine p.m. here. Could you call me tonight at nine, your time? That would be very kind of you.”

  “Yeah, “ she said. “One thing, though. Why way down there? I mean, if there’s some connection to what’s happening here in Eugene, why are these magneto-REME-thingies happening so far away? Why not someplace closer, you know, Hawaii, or L.A.?”

  “Do you have a globe handy?” Miss Ishue.

  “Call me Ilene,” she said sweetly, scanning her hotel room. “Gosh, no globe,” she said sarcastically.

  “All right, Ilene. After you get off the phone you might want to get one and take a peek, or you can go online and look at a virtual globe. Henrique Island. Talk to you at nine.”

  Ishue placed the phone in its cradle with great care, then did a little dance. “I’m back in the saddle again,” she sing-sang, dumping clothes from her suitcase back into the dresser drawers.

  When she reached the Gyttings-Lindstrom plant, company security personnel waved her off the driveway. The media, it now seemed, was relegated to parking on the street and standing no closer than the sidewalk. She counted three news vans and about a dozen people in front. As she approached on foot, a voice caught her attention.

  “Ishue! Ilene Ishue! You weren’t at the airport! Where’s my car?”

  It was Vilasik, headed her way with a nasty scowl on his ugly, backstabbing face.

  Recognizing her name, several reporters turned toward her, bearing expressions, which ran the field from envy to admiration.

  Vilasik was now nearly on top of her, invading her 12 inches of personal space with his heinous breath. “You are so fired. Gimme those car keys!”

  “Back off, asshole,” a voice said from behind her. Vilasik flinched as the source of the voice came between them. “So you’re Ilene Ishue,” the voice said. “I’m Walsh, L.A. Times. Good job kicking our collective asses with that Deverson piece. Who’s the jerk who better not be standing right behind me anymore.”

  He was kind of too stocky, too outdoorsy rugged for her taste, but handsome enough. Barely her height. Enormous feet. She recognized the name, one of their big hitters. “That’s the city guy, my replacement,” she said. “I got replaced because I missed yesterday’s press conference.”

  “So what have you done for me lately,” he scowled, exaggerating the disgust in his voice. “The Times wouldn’t treat you like that. Let me put in a good word for you.”

  He was trying to hide his wedding band with his reporter’s notebook. How flirty!

  She then thought of the digital recorder in the back pocket of her jeans. The stuff on that tape might prove to be front-page-above-the-fold material. Another scoop for moi. Where was she going to place it if Ed was really through with her?

  “I’ll give it some thought,” she said, smiling coyly.

  “What you working on now?” Walsh asked, trying to fend off an end to their conversation.

  “That’s for you to read tomorrow,” she said sweetly, moving toward the temporary guard station in the driveway. As she passed through the crowd, some of the other reporters gave her little nods of recognition, although she didn’t know any of them, had never circulated at their level. A gorgeous hunk holding a CBS microphone said: “Nice job, Ishue,” and a CNN camerawoman seconded the plaudit. She felt absolutely wonderful.

  But the security guy ruined her mood in a hurry. He didn’t seem to care if she claimed to be a personal friend of Sara Keplar or Adel Deverson or that she had important information for Dr. Vrynos. “Someone will be out shortly with a statement,” he said several times, often interrupting her to repeat himself. “You’ll have to wait over there with the other…reporters.” He said the word like one might say ‘diarrhea,’ or ‘cockroach.’ Suddenly a security guy in a suit with a coiled wire coming out of his ear pushed his way over to her, and in a dark, deep, scary voice: “Leave the premises Miss Ishue or you will be arrested for trespassing.”

  Damn, I’m so famous they recognize me on sight!

  She worked her way back through the crowd of newspeople and headed around the side of the building, trying Marla’s card-key in every door she passed. It was as the ex-employee had predicted – the locks had all been changed.

  At the rear corner of the building she paused. There were another half-dozen or so media people, mostly still photographers, milling around the rear gates. She’d been up and down this alley before. There was no way in. At least not directly.

  Day 3

  Thursday

  Gyttings-Lindstrom Research Unit,

  Eugene, Oregon

  “Being not much inclined to the written word, I find it most awkward making a journal at this late stage, but I feel it necessary to record my thoughts on INFX, for there is much about the work that falls between the lines of my experiment designs, my lab notes and the many forms I have designed and filled-out so diligently over the years - nay - decades.

  “For me time would seem to be growing short. More and more often I find myself exhausted to the point of paralysis. I am lucid less and less, suffering, I believe, the cumulative ill effects of bombarding myself with this peculiar
, undetectable, unnamed and undefined radiation I have unleashed. The doctors at university are…of course mystified. How could they understand?

  “I have come to believe there is something that occurs during that fraction of a microsecond, that exact moment when a sentient creature’s life ceases to be, when, if subjected to the convergence of the RF and EM coils, a heretofore undiscovered form of energy is released, a power akin to the force which initiated the dawn of life on earth, and this is what I fear has happened and is now happening, unchecked, inside my body. I have been present, in close proximity to the coils for 107 experiments in which at least some level of a successful rupture was accomplished. It has taken its toll.

  The doctors say it is Alzheimer’s, a convenient diagnostic package to stick me in. But I know better.

  “There is little left for me to do except gamble on a wild theory, one born more of intuition than science, one which has developed in my mind as a shapeless instinct during the incessant and bizarre dreams I’ve been having over the past year. So indistinct and other-worldly is this theory that I have not been able yet to put it to word, but I know I must try because I know there will be others who will follow me on this path, perhaps even some of my old students, and they must have the full benefit of my knowledge, however strange and unscientific it might seem.”

  A snowflake fell between the words ‘old’ and ‘students,’ an irony not wasted on Gill. It melted immediately, blurring the freshly printed letters, then more snow fell so Gill tossed the papers onto a picnic table under a large cloth umbrella. He leaned his head back and looked straight up into the cold March sky at the fat, whitish flakes, almost invisible until the last second, camouflaged against the light gray mist of an oppressive gray sky.