Afterimage

by Roderick Geiger

  Gill had decided to let it ride. He’d been staring at the CF monitor so intently that the numbers were blurring in and out of focus. He was thinking about Marcy and Jennifer and sweet, sad little Anabelle, at home in Fresno, wondering where their daddy was. His eyes moved down to Sara at the imaging station, busily typing commands. Only a thin sliver of the side of her face was visible, the high cheekbone, turned-up nose. He thought about how she’d looked last night, her perfect, ageless body, glistening with sweat. God, timelessly beautiful Sara. Manipulative Sara. Suddenly he felt very lonely. He just wanted to go home.

  Sara spun in her chair and her mouth opened, but the sound was delayed, slow to reach him. “Gill!” She was pointing at the CF monitor, which was bouncing between 0%, 1% and 2%.

  “Now!” he shouted, and watched Galtrup punch his keyboard with an exaggerated motion. He felt the room lurch forward, as if it were a vessel...or an amusement park ride. The cries of surprise behind him told him he was not altogether imagining it.

  The monitors were snow now. The window, useless. Even the computer screens were contorted, unreadable blurs of color. The Bridge was vibrating, accelerating. Everyone was holding on for dear life.

  “Whoooweee,” Chalmais yelped like a rodeo rider. “Yeeehaaa!”

  All at once the Bridge lurched again, the vibrations diminishing.

  “Off, off, off,” Gill shouted, climbing to his feet. “Lights to 100%”

  “Yeah!” Chalmais chortled with glee. “Yeah!”

  Gwen was sobbing and repeating the word: “Stop!”

  “It’s over,” Adel said soothingly. “It’s alright now, honey. He’s free.”

  “Thirty-two degrees down there,” Galtrup said. “I’m not getting a confirmation on my carriage motors. We’ll have to crank ‘em out by hand.”

  Gill and Sara watched from the back of the lab as the two carriages rolled free of the tunnels. Martin Evans, career detective, Doctor of Divinity, President and Founder of the Ruptura Society, lay quiet as death, his ancient skin a translucent blue. Gill silently inventoried explanations as to why the INFX had failed. Somewhere in microscopic space and nanosecond time an error had occurred, and the old detective’s body had not disintegrated into nothingness. Or perhaps it was something as simple as the old professor’s ranting about yin and yang, about how the subjects needed to be opposite sexes.

  Dr. Baker and Josh Cochran immediately went to work on Evans, firing the defibrillator several times without result. Baker checked his watch: “I should be the one to do this…I’m calling it…1:41 a.m.”

  Meanwhile, Lomax and Galtrup worked on Justin, removing restraints and the heavy eyeshield. There was no sign of injury but the young man remained unconscious and unresponsive.

  “I’m here,” Gwen cried. “I’m here, darling.”

  Lomax poked at Justin’s legs and yanked on his toes and fingers, then prodded him all over with a needle-sharp probe. “Let’s get him out of this freezer.” Two orderlies transferred him to a gurney and rolled him out.

  Evans’ gurney followed - but detoured down the long hallway toward the morgue.

  Day 2

  Friday

  Weimer Clinic,

  Berkeley, California

  Scarcely two days after admission, Warren was told to take Tyler home. The boy was fine. There was simply no reason to keep him any longer.

  The news was a great burden lifted from Warren’s shoulders. His negligence had not caused the boy some terrible psychosis after all.

  In the two days following Tyler’s arrival here, clinic staff had run batteries of psychological inventories and various types of intelligence tests. They’d even tried hypnosis, but the boy didn’t seem to be susceptible to suggestion. In the end Dr. Farris proclaimed Tyler to be ‘very intelligent and well adjusted,’ and could justify holding him no longer.

  Warren was pleased - but baffled. It seemed everything about the boy had improved. His speech was easier to understand; his pronunciation, syntax, choice of words, all risen to near-adult levels. He seemed calmer, more confident. Even his appearance was improved, robust color in his cheeks, the eyes clear, piercing blue. To Warren’s recollection, no one had ever referred to Tyler as intelligent; certainly not well adjusted. But now…

  Louise had already lined up a contingency lawyer, alleging the boy had suffered irreversible harm while in Warren’s care. They were suing for custody and monetary damages.

  But once her lawyer got a chance to interview Tyler, he abandoned the suit, reminding her never to call his office again.

  Two days earlier, Tyler had made the long trip to Berkeley by private ambulance, heavily sedated so that he’d slept the entire 12 hours’ drive.

  When he’d arrived at the Weimer clinic he was moved to an examining room and allowed to awaken on his own. An hour later the boy groaned softly awake, complaining of a headache. No swinging from light fixtures. No leaping on the furniture.

  Dr. Farris had offered the most plausible explanation. Following a psychotic break sometimes the best course of action was simply to medicate the patient for an extended period of deep sleep, thus allowing the mind a chance to reset, realign the day-to-day rituals and behaviors that had been blotted out during the break. Farris had called it a ‘reboot,’ and said that in this case it had happened accidentally, during the long trip to the clinic. There could be no guarantee against recurrence, but in the short term Farris determined the boy would be better off in familiar surroundings, especially at school among his schoolmates. He was not so keen about the boy being bounced back and forth between combative, separated parents. But in the end, Farris decided that sending him home with Warren would be the better bet.

  The sun was setting maroon on The City across the bay as Warren loaded the white Buick. Tyler dutifully thanked several staffers before climbing into the passenger’s seat. Once on the Bayshore Freeway, Warren asked: “Have you been able to remember anything about the first hospital, son?”

  “No. I don’t remember being there. But I do remember the dream I keep having.”

  “I thought you told Dr. Farris you didn’t remember dreams…”

  “I didn’t see the point of tellin’ him. I didn’t want ta give him an excuse to keep me in there.”

  Warren steered into a tollbooth line and came to a stop. “Can you tell me?”

  “You won’t think it’s stupid?”

  “I won’t.”

  “Dad? Did you know there’s other dimensions all around us that we can’t even see?”

  What comic book did he get that from? “Of course. Everybody knows that!”

  The boy eyed him suspiciously, as if detecting and recognizing the sarcasm.

  “I won’t think it’s stupid, really. I promise.”

  “Okay,” Tyler said, unbuckling the too-big shoulder harness so he could turn and look at his father. He snuggled back against the door armrest and folded his legs into an Indian squat. “The dream starts out with me standing in a wide, slow-moving river. The water is not very deep because I am really far away from shore, but it only comes up to here.”

  Tyler gestured to mid-calf and waited for his father to glance over.

  “As I look around I can see what looks like a man in the river downstream. It’s so bright out it hurts my eyes a little, but it’s really sharp and clear. The water is a beautiful clear turquoise. It flashes with gold, like in a cartoon.

  “Then it occurs to me this is not really a river, it is a pretend river and I am making it up. I can control it, change the color, make little waves just by wiggling my finger. It’s fun.

  “But I can’t change the direction of flow and I can’t change the other man I see downstream, who I see is walking toward me. He has a round face and he is wearing a long, white coat.”

  “Labcoat?” Warren blurted. “Did you get a name?”

  “Yeah, dad. When he talks to me his lips don’t move. He is talking to me with his mind and not really in words. More like thoughts…feelings even.
He’s a doctor. Doctor Deverson.

  Warren tried to remember when Tyler might have heard that name. Must have heard me and Ilene talking.

  “He tells me this river flows not with water but with life. It’s where souls go when they die, to be used later. Recycled…downstream somewhere, I guess. But sometimes a person’s soul doesn’t turn into liquid so it doesn’t flow into the river. Like him.

  “He says sometimes when this happens, it’s nature, like volcanoes, meteors, even electrical storms. And sometimes it’s a man-made accident, like atom bombs. These people and animals are almost always weak, confused, fading in and out. He calls them ‘partials.’ Don’t know where they are or what’s happening to them. He says they usually wade into the river and eventually dissolve. The woman they call Connie, she was weak. She went into the river.

  “But Doctor Deverson says he caused what happened to him, on purpose. He is strong and can stay here a real long time. He says he can come and visit me because of Fred, and the INFX.”

  Warren paid the toll and was accelerating again. “What do you know about INFX, Tyler?”

  “Oh, a lot, dad. Doctor Deverson told me last night they did another INFX and they will do more INFXs and they will be strong, not partials, and not go into the river. And Doctor Deverson says he will get stronger too; he will be able to leave the river and come into this world.”

  Warren marveled at the boy’s imagination, all this derived from only an overheard sentence or two. “I’ll bet he’s pretty lonely, standing in that river for 10 years,” Warren said good-naturedly. “And cold too.”

  “Dad…he can’t feel anything. And he can come visit me anytime I’m asleep. And when I die, I’ll be strong, not a partial.”

  “Die?” Warren snapped, jerking the wheel. His voice grew stern: “I don’t want to hear you talk like that. You’re not going to die.”

  “Of course I am, dad. Everyone does. But when I die, I won’t have to dissolve into the river. Doctor Deverson promised.

  Day 1

  Saturday

  Gyttings-Lindstrom Research Unit,

  Eugene, Oregon

  The snowflakes were so small as to be almost invisible, a light drizzle, a fog of tiny freezing things which stung at Ishue’s unaccustomed-to-the-cold face as she waited in the alley. She’d been waiting for more than an hour. It was late afternoon. Her feet were cold…and wet. She was beginning to feel very foolish.

  “What a goddamn stupid goddamn idea,” she said aloud, watching her breath form into a little cloud. Then she heard it. A diesel engine. She turned and watched a South Willamette Refuse Company front-loader slowly materialize out of the icy fog, a blue ghost working its way up the alley. Just as the dispatcher had said it would.

  She’d been trying since yesterday to get to someone in authority at Gyttings-Lindstrom, both here and in Austin. Unanswered telephone calls. Endless voice menus. Unreturned messages. She’d also tried pounding on the front doors until her ungloved fists had gone numb in the icy air. She knew they could see her – were watching her on closed-circuit. Creeps!

  Her sense of dread and urgency had hit its high point this morning, at 3:00 a.m., when Robbins had called her again at her hotel room. A third disturbance had rocked the new impact area 1380 km SSW of Henrique Island, just before dawn. Caught off guard, the Argyle’s launch had not gotten around in time, had swamped in the heavy swells generated from the initial surge. Fortunately they’d been anchored a half kilo off – far enough to avoid colliding with rock.

  “We’re going through regular U.N. channels but it’s taking too long. Robbins had said. “We must talk to them, Miss Ishue.” Then the connection had gone bad.

  “Now we’ll just see how airtight your goddamn security really is,” Ishue cursed out loud as the truck driver lowered the empty Lane Beverage Distributors’ dumpster bin to the pavement with a resounding, intentionally loud crash. A moment later his passenger door popped open.

  “Whoa!” he squealed in surprise.

  Ishue stuck her arm in, dangling a fifty-dollar bill. “You go in there?” she asked, gesturing with her head toward the Gyttings-Lindstrom yard.

  “Hell, girl, you don’t got to give me no money. You just got to go out on a date with me.” He said the word date funny, lifting his eyebrows in a suggestive, lewd way.

  “Well, all right then,” she said, retracting the fifty and climbing up.

  “First,” He added. He was a big man. Sliding over just a little effectively blocked her from getting in the cab. He looked to be about 50, wore his dirty brown-gray hair in a ponytail. Had a baseball cap that said: Got Elk?

  “You don’t trust me. Tell you what; take the fifty as earnest money, then give it back to me after our first date, if ya want.”

  “Yeah! Earnest money!” He let her in.

  The truck lined up with the roll-up door at the far end of the yard. A guard, watching through a camera, opened the door; the driver lowered his fork and rumbled forward with a lurch.

  “This is my stop,” Ishue said, jumping deftly from the truck running-board to the dock. She maneuvered to the service door unmolested, slipped the key into the lock and pushed inside. It was nothing like Marla’s drawing. Instead of a huge, open, largely vacant warehouse, she found herself in a maze of massive, windowless trailer houses on jacks, parked side-by-side, lots of steel framing, raw insulation, axles and tires still hanging from the frames, cross-braced every which-way, connected by conduits and pipes of all sizes. This was the working end of the high-speed remodeling project, 40,000 square feet of warehouse space converted into hospital rooms, operating rooms, living quarters, kitchens, bathrooms, laboratories. All accomplished, according to Marla, in a single week! In the dim warehouse lights high above, Ishue, penlight in mouth, had to feel her way up and down several dead ends before reaching a door. She cracked it open and peered into a brightly lit corridor. It was vacant. She was in.

  The first corner she rounded brought her into view of a standing guard. She backpedaled out of sight, right into the arms of another guard who had come up behind her. He was big. She didn’t even try and struggle.

  “Got ‘er,” the guard said to a hallway camera aimed right at them.

  A speaker crackled on in the ceiling above them, and a deep male voice said: “Miss Ishue. So nice of you to drop in.”

  Blackburn’s private office had become a clutter of randomly stacked video monitors displaying various rooms and hallways within the building.

  “Hey,” Ishue said, glancing into one of the screens as she entered, “isn’t that that paralyzed actor guy…”

  Annoyed, Blackburn clicked the monitor off with a hand-held remote. “Breaking and entering, trespassing…”

  “I’ve got a key,” Ishue said, removing it from her pocket. “No breaking anything.”

  “Okay. How about possession of stolen property.”

  “Not so fast, there, big fella. I’ve been trying to get word to somebody here since yesterday.” She counted on her fingers: “Pounded on the door; tried calling a couple thousand times…I’ve got an important message for the INFX scientists.”

  “I seeeee,” he said. “You broke in to give us a message. So give.”

  She folded her arms. “It’s a little technical…for present company, that is. No offense, of course. But I’ll need to talk to Dr. Vrynos and Dr. Galtrup directly.”

  “No problem,” he said mockingly. “Come with me.” She followed into a room with a table, six hard-back chairs and an enormous mirror on one wall. “Please wait here.”

  “Okay, okay, wait. Look, an oceanographer called me yesterday from Henrique Island. Tell Vrynos and Galtrup to check the coordinates of that Island. It’s very important…”

  Blackburn slammed the door and locked it.

  “Shit,” Ishue said. More than anything, she hated waiting.

  It took Blackburn three hours to get around to delivering Ishue’s message. Gill and Galtrup were already at Chalmais’ large globe by the time
he finished. “Here it is,” Gill said excitedly, “Henrique Island.” They stared at it for awhile in silence.

  Galtrup saw it first. “The coordinates!” he shrieked, grabbing an atlas off the shelf. “Manzanita, California… 34.11 N by 118.88 W.” He flipped pages. “Port Alford, Henrique Islands… 34.11 S by 61.12 E! He did the math quickly in his head. It’s the damn opposite side of the planet from Manzanita!”

  “Exactly the opposite!” Gill confirmed.

  They marched single-file into the little waiting cell. “What took you so long,” Ishue asked despondently.

  “The oceanographer?” Gill said abruptly. “Tell us about the oceanographer.”

  “Does that mean we’ll be dispensing with the introductions?” Ishue asked.

  “She made it all up,” Blackburn said.

  “He does flatter me,” Ishue said, smirking at the security chief. She produced her phone and played-back the first conversation she’d had with Robbins.

  “That makes no sense at all,” Chalmais said.

  “Actually it does,” Galtrup corrected. “Action – reaction. You punch a hole in the magnetosphere here, a something happens on the opposite side.”

  “It’s fundamental physics.” Gill said.

  “It’s bullshit,” Chalmais proclaimed.

  “Dr. Robbins doesn’t seem to think so,” Ishue said. “He’s insisting that you suspend your work immediately. A ship almost sank yesterday!”

  “Of course we’ll speak with him,” Gill said thoughtfully, “let me borrow your phone…”

  “Not so fast, doctors. We’ll get to that when you agree to...certain terms of mine.”

  Chalmais and Blackburn exchanged disgusted glances.

  “Okay, here’s the deal. I want the exclusive. I know you’re on a tight schedule and you’ll be running more tests soon. I want to watch. I want access to the entire building. I want to sit in on your top-level meetings…stuff like that.”