EXOSKELETON - A Novel

by Shane Stadler

  Even through the physical pain, his thoughts were of his parents. Will realized that, in a single year, his existence had been reduced to a periodic toggling between physical misery and acute mental anguish; one pain always on the verge of eclipsing the other.

  The Exo stiffened and his thinking time was over.

  The intercom voice boomed, "Admit that you raped the girl and you will be spared the afternoon treatment."

  "How many different ways can I tell you bastards to fuck off?" Will shouted.

  "This will be the worst treatment so far. Are you sure you won't reconsider?"

  "I said, fuck off."

  Seconds later, the Exo sprang to work. It started with his right forearm, then switched to his shin, upper arm, and femur—which is when his bladder let go. The program then repeated the sequence, only bending the limbs in a different direction.

  Two hours later they returned to the femur. Will's vision was going dark and he felt he was on the verge of losing consciousness. But then something unexpected happened ...

  It was the pain ... it was gone.

  *

  The medic came back into the control room, closed the door, and took his seat behind a computer. "The warden was pretty pissed," he said, shaking his head. "Said to make sure we "rode him on nine' for the rest of the afternoon."

  "Why is this guy getting so much attention?"

  "Don't know ... He's a pedophile—raped a teenager ... "

  "Oops—sounds like he went out again," the tech interrupted.

  The medic checked the sensors, first on the computer monitor and then on the control board. The computer displayed the most basic sensor readings, but the control board had everything—over a hundred readouts.

  "Not according to my sources. He's still conscious."

  "But he's not making any noise ... The pain level is at 8.9," the tech said, and clicked a button to increase the strain. Still no sound. "What the hell's going on?" He stood up, looked through the window to the experimental floor and shrugged.

  "Maybe the PL monitors aren't working," the medic suggested. Again he examined the panel of readouts. "They all seem fine. They're multiple-redundant systems, anyway—they don't all fail at once. Better call engineering."

  *

  The pain was gone, but for a reason Will didn't understand. He was even more confused about his current state of mind, or perspective. He was now observing his own straining face from above.

  The pain was still present somewhere—he could sense it—but he was not feeling it. He was somehow on the outside. He looked at the Exoskeleton, then touched the hydraulic piston that was exerting pressure on his femur. It was warm and vibrating. He felt his right thigh muscle twitching—only from the outside. And then, without warning, the pain was back ...

  *

  " ... oh ... never mind—it's okay," the tech said to the engineer over the phone. He turned down the volume of the floor microphone. "We're back in business," he added as he hung up.

  "Never saw anything like that before—a man not screaming at PL 8," said the medic, shaking his head.

  "Me either," the tech replied. "Well, whatever it was, we should write it up ... and we better get the final program loaded—I want to get out of here on time."

  He set up the program and initiated it.

  *

  The pressure on Will's femur was released, and he hoped it would be the end of the treatment for the day. But it seemed too early.

  After a five minute lull, he heard a humming near his ears, and his hopes were dashed. The head-cage contracted slowly, and he felt an immense pressure on his skull. In just a few seconds, it felt like his head was being run over by a truck. The pressure persisted for about ten minutes, during which the head-cage made slight radial and lateral adjustments. It then contracted slightly again, the pain intensifying and producing nausea. Somehow Will held down the contents of his stomach; he was getting better at that.

  When the head-cage finally expanded back to the neutral position, a rush of headache pain surged in his skull, and his eyes felt like they were going to pop.

  After a short lull of inactivity, the head-cage hummed again, even though Will hadn't fully recovered from the head rush. This time it expanded—pulling outward on the four head bolts. It felt like his head was bursting apart, and this time his eyesight blurred, faltering. He still heard and felt the Exo making fine adjustments for what seemed like twenty minutes, after which the pressure decreased slowly, and his vision gradually returned.

  Was it over? After a five-minute, anxiety-ridden wait, he heard the servos whine again: this time they all moved—from those at his feet, all the way to his head. It was the grand finale. They were bending everything at once—both femurs, both shins, both arms, and the head-cage was expanding again. The pain was tremendous, growing exponentially worse—but then, for a second time, it was gone.

  ... No pain at all ...

  Again Will saw everything from the outside. It felt like a dream, but far more lucid. From his overhead view, he saw all of the moving Exo joints. He heard the hydraulics, pneumatics, and stepper motors. Yet he felt nothing.

  *

  "Okay, what the fuck is going on here?" the technician exclaimed. "Why is he not unconscious, or screaming? We're giving him everything and he's not even reacting."

  "The sensors all seem okay," the medic informed him. He reached over to the control panel and pushed a button to mute an alarm. "The pain level is at 9.3—the max. That's cardiac arrest territory." He grabbed the phone. "I'll get the engineers up here."

  In less than three minutes, an engineer came into the control room. "What's the problem?" he asked, seemingly annoyed.

  "Hear that?" the tech asked in response.

  The engineer tilted his head and closed his eyes. "I don't hear anything."

  "Exactly. He should be screaming like a little girl."

  At that moment Will's screaming resumed.

  "Seems okay now." The engineer shrugged and walked out of the room, shaking his head.

  The tech cursed and sat down. "I've never seen anything like this. Either something's wrong with the system, or something's wrong with that guy—or both."

  "I agree," the medic responded. "We better write this one up carefully."

  *

  Will's bones ached horribly, his head throbbed, his stomach churned. When the nighttime prep was over, the Exo placed him in the horizontal sleeping position. He knew he had about a half hour before the rotation would start. He thought about his parents and wept softly for a few minutes. He wondered if it was this great sadness, coupled with the physical pain, which had caused his hallucinations. Otherwise, he thought he might be going insane.

  Will was starting to doze when a noise startled him back to consciousness. It reminded him of how, in his life before this current nightmare, he would sometimes dream that someone had knocked on the door. It would startle him awake, but no one would ever be there.

  A few seconds later, out of the silence, he heard the sound again; a voice.

  "William," it said.

  It was a man's voice. It wasn't loud, like the voice over the speakers, but it wasn't quiet either. Will was sure it originated from inside the room, but he couldn't tell from which direction it came.

  "What ... who is that? Who the hell's in here?" he asked. He strained his eyes, but couldn't see anyone in the dim light.

  "Be calm," the voice said, its tone deep and soothing: the voice of an older man.

  "Who are you?" Will kept straining to see.

  "I just want to talk," the voice replied.

  Will was suspicious. This could be one of their games.

  "What do you want?"

  "I just want you to know that you are no longer alone."

  "What do you mean, I'm not alone?'" Will asked, but there was no reply. "Hello?"

  He listened carefully, but heard nothing more. He was frightened—not only by the possible presence of someone else in the room, but by the idea that
he might be losing his mind. If he survived the year, he might be taken out of the Exoskeleton and put directly into a padded room.

  *

  On January seventeenth, Richard Greene rented a van and drove to a storage facility with some old furniture. A miserable wintery mix had started in the late afternoon, and the roads were treacherous by 7 p.m. By eight o'clock he'd swapped the furniture for the crate of files, and was on his way to his brother-in-law's house, an hour west of DC. He wanted to get the files out of the city, but needed to keep the storage space filled in case someone was to check.

  Richard thought Claire handled the news fairly well. She even suggested that he keep the files in her brother's barn until he could transport them. As soon as he could, he'd personally deliver the crate to Chicago. He didn't want to further involve anyone else—Claire, family, friends. And he wasn't going to ship it; the files were too valuable. He had no choice but to drive the twelve hours, maybe more, depending on the weather.

  His next step was to make up an excuse to request a few days off. Bergman never had a problem with that, and would likely be amenable to the request.

  Claire and the kids would go to Iowa to stay with her sister for a few weeks while everything went down. They would leave after the files were in McDougal's hands. Richard dreaded that future drive back to DC, to say what might be his final goodbye to his family. Even if he wasn't dead after everything played out, he'd probably end up in jail.

  Many people had died because of the program—patients killed by the treatments, others terminated because they were security risks—and many more would die if the program actually accomplished its goal. Richard hoped he could stop it in time.

  *

  Room nineteen was a hypobaric chamber.

  That day Will's ears popped, his eyes bulged, and at times his sinuses felt like they were on the verge of exploding. He experienced high altitude sickness, and got the bends. It was a day he'd never forget, same as the first eighteen.

  There were no hallucinations during the day's treatment, but he wished there had been; they brought release from the pain. By the end of the day, his body ached more than he ever thought possible. Nineteen days gone, three hundred and forty-six to go.

  Will was just beginning to drift to sleep when he heard the voice again. His heart sank: it had taken great effort to convince himself the first occurrence was a hallucination. In some ways, the prospect of mental illness was more frightening than that of physical pain. He could heal, presumably, from the physical abuse, but he questioned whether he could recover psychologically.

  "William?" the voice queried from somewhere in the dim blue.

  Will was startled but silent, as he again tried to determine if he'd really heard the voice. Finally he responded, "Who are you?"

  "You are not going insane," the voice replied.

  Will remained silent.

  "Why do you think you are here?"

  "Damn," Will huffed, "still trying to get me to confess? Well you can just f-"

  "-No," the voice interrupted. "Why would I ask you to confess to something you are not responsible for?"

  Will was dumbfounded. "What the hell does that mean? Why am I here then—why are you here talking to me about it? How do you know I am not responsible for ... "

  "Slow down."

  Will stopped.

  "May I ask a few questions?" the voice asked.

  Will remained silent, hoping the voice would go away.

  "Are you afraid to die?"

  He was not expecting this question. "Why should I answer any of your questions?"

  "You don't have to," the voice replied. "Maybe I will leave you to sleep ... "

  "No ... no, please," Will said, suddenly panicked. Conversation was a luxury he'd forgotten, even if it was some elaborate mind-game.

  "I'll try to answer your question. But first, tell me your name."

  "You may call me Landau."

  "Okay, Landau," Will said. The name sounded familiar to him, but he couldn't place it. "I can't see you. Maybe you could step out of the shadows."

  "I'm afraid we'll have to go on like this, William. Now, please, my question ... " Landau said.

  "Dying? Yes ... I'm afraid to die ... But I want to die at the same time; it sounds strange, I know ... "

  "Not at all," Landau replied. "I think such a paradox exists in everyone. Some want to see what's on the other side of this life, but most are afraid to cross over, of course. They are afraid of the unknown."

  "I don't blame anyone for being afraid of the unknown," Will responded.

  "What do you think happens when you die?"

  "I think I was pretty close to being dead already," Will said, referring to his near-drowning. "Based on that, I think our consciousness just fades out, and that's it—we cease to exist."

  "Next question," Landau continued. "Can you tell me where you were on July nineteenth, 1952?"

  Will stewed in confusion for a moment, and replied, "I think you must have the wrong file or something. That was way before I was born."

  "I don't have any files," Landau said. "Please, answer the question."

  "Okay; I wasn't born yet. I didn't exist."

  "So your fear of death is rooted in uncertainty—even though, according to your vague definition, you were dead before you were born?" Landau asked.

  "Is unborn equivalent to being dead?" Will replied. "And there's also the pain involved with dying."

  "I see. And you think that death might be more painful than what you've experienced so far?"

  "I don't know if it will be more painful ... I guess I don't really know anything at this point."

  "But you believe you simply cease to exist when you die?" Landau asked. "The molecules that make up your body just disperse into the universe, and whatever it is that is you will be gone forever? You believe that you are just a property of your physical body—of your atoms?"

  "I don't know anything for sure," Will replied.

  "Think about what we have discussed until we speak again."

  "When will that be?" After a few seconds with no response, Will said, "Hello?"

  He waited for a reply until the Exo began the sleep cycle, after which his thoughts gave way to nightmares.

  *

  Heinrich Bergman took a swig of the clear liquid and swallowed hard. "This wasn't exactly what I had in mind," he said, coughing as he spoke. He walked to his office window and gazed over the nightscape of Washington, DC, while the burning in his throat slowly waned.

  "Wodka calms the nerves, Heinrich," Lenny replied, and swallowed three fingers worth in a single gulp. He refilled his glass before he even took another breath. "So you've identified the woman from the lab?"

  "How do you drink like that?" Bergman asked, astonished. He broke his stare from Lenny's glass and answered, "Yes, our techs broke into the email account from the card you recovered. Everything was forwarded to a Denise Walker at the DNA Foundation. She's McDougal's assistant."

  "Do I need to pay her a visit?"

  "That won't be necessary. According to her e-mails she was there that night to begin looking for the samples ... So McDougal is no longer our immediate concern—and with any luck your business at the lab scared them off our case entirely."

  "What about the files?" Lenny asked.

  The words grated on Bergman's mind. ""I'm hoping Frank Weiss was our culprit ... Perhaps he hid them away; someplace they won't be found."

  Lenny nodded.

  Bergman felt his gut tighten up a notch. He didn't believe Weiss took those files. He watched Lenny down another two fingers of vodka. He envied Lenny a little: if the project collapsed, he could just walk away—unless they could connect him to any of the terminations he'd carried out. But that was unlikely—Lenny was very good at his business. Bergman knew, on the other hand, that he would have to answer for everything.

  *

  On the morning of Day Twenty-one, the Exo brought Will up a floor. It was the second time since the beginning
of his "treatment" that he'd moved up a level. There were no announcements, which came as a relief since they only conveyed bad news. The latest, which had come the previous morning, was that Will's inheritance from his parents' estate had been claimed by the government to partially fund his stay at the Red Box. His parents weren't rich, but he figured it must have been a fair sum of money—well over a hundred thousand dollars—with an equal amount going to his sister.

  It only reminded him of what a waste the entire situation had been. There was nothing he could do about it now, but he worried what he might do later, if he ever got out of this place.. His thoughts frequently darkened to the point of frightening him. It seemed to happen almost every day now.

  They didn't solicit a confession this morning, which Will thought was strange. Instead, the Exo positioned him in a reclined position near the floor. A few minutes later he heard a door open, and two people walked in. His heart sank.

  The dentist and his assistant, Ms. Hatley, each rolled in a cart. Colby positioned his at Will's right side and actuated the cart's brake mechanism with his foot, producing a horrible screech. Hatley did the same with hers on the left.

  Two harnesses of cables and hoses lowered from a port in the high ceiling, and were connected to receptacles on the carts. The cart on Will's right held tools, including a drill, and some hand instruments. The one on his left had an x-ray viewer board, a sink, sprayers, blowers, and other medical supplies.

  Colby turned on a light and faced Will. "Nice to see you again, 523. I suppose you remember me—I'm Dr. Colby, like the cheese."