The Whisperer in Dissonance

by Welke, Ian

  “I meant what I said about the looking glass,” Michael says. His voice is hoarse, but he’s steadied himself.

  Light strobes from a source just outside the room. Michael leads me down a doorless hallway toward the light. At the other end of the hall, there’s a partitioned room. I guess the warehouse must be lined with these partitions, connected by ill-lit hallways. It feels like reality has shifted to the side ever since I came through the door into the warehouse. Like the warehouse is another world, existing side by side and wedged within my own.

  The first partition is furnished with a series of shelves. The shelves are stacked with what looks like corporate binders, only larger, about twice the length of any notebook I’ve seen. I pull the closest binder off the shelf and open to a random page. The text is a series of printed characters something like a cross between cuneiform and circuitry diagrams.

  Michael shrugs back at me, and I put the binder back.

  From the waist down, the shelves are lined with banks of flashing lights and tape reels. A sound like a cat getting its tail stepped on squeals through the room. One of the tape reels winds. The lights beneath it blink red and yellow.

  “I’m guessing this is the library.”

  “Guessing? I thought you said you’d been here?”

  “Yes. No. Sort of. It was different. When I was here the last time, I saw the version that they wanted me to see. And I was here on business, delivering a data disc for my company. Since then, when the change started, I tracked that this is where we were sending data packets to.” He waves for me to follow. “C’mon. If I’m right, what I need will be in the computer room.”

  ~

  The hallway grows darker and narrows the farther we walk. The hall starts as a plywood frame, bare, with no drywall or insulation between the walls we have to squeeze between. I realize I don’t know where the light is coming from. The walls become a deep, dark blue. Specks of light emerge from that blue.

  It’s an illusion. It’s an illusion.

  But no matter what I tell myself, it’s there in front of me. The light specks seem to be stars. I lift my hand, but I can’t quite reach. My rational brain tells me that I’ll touch solid wall, but every sense I have tells me that my hand will pass into cold empty space. Below me, there’s nothing. Somehow we’ve walked through the night’s sky.

  At last, a sense of structure returns. A ceiling light appears ahead. With the light, I can see the ceiling, walls, and floor ahead, and that they are solid. As the corridor widens again, the walls change once more, morphing into a white surface like hard plastic. I reach out and touch the wall. It’s smooth. My hand glides along its surface.

  The corridor emerges into a room with curved edges where the walls meet. It reminds me of a pill capsule. White, smooth, with similar curves.

  There are three doors on each side. My sense of direction is either off, or this makes no sense. The way we’ve gone, these doors should lead to the back wall of the warehouse, and there was only the door we came in through on that wall.

  Michael skips the side doors, and heads toward another hallway on the other side of the capsule shaped room.

  I have to catch up to tap his shoulder. “What is this place?”

  “I think it’s some sort of hub.”

  “A hub for what?”

  “I don’t know exactly. But you remember in your dream the door I told you that you didn’t want to go through? I’m pretty sure that one of these doors leads to that room. And that room is a terrible place to be.”

  I wonder what’s so terrible about that room, but with things the way they are I figure it’s best to focus on the weird around me and not give my imagination free reign.

  We come to a door at the end of the hall. I grab his shoulder before he opens it. “Are you saying that one of those doors behind us leads to my dream?”

  “No. I’m saying there was a door in your dream that led to a room that could be accessed through one of those doors. Not all doors work in both directions. The door here, how I understand the hub works… it’s similar to the hack I used to get into your dream.”

  “Where do the rest of the doors lead?”

  He shakes his head and winces. A look passes over his face like it hurts to think about it and it hurts worse to stop. “I don’t know. Alien worlds? Atlantis? The Pentagon? Who knows? We don’t have time now to find out.”

  The door opens to an unlit hallway. I take two steps in and the same cold darkness I felt in the night-sky-hallway wraps around me. A slow creak comes from the hub room behind us, but when I look back I can’t see light anymore. The light from the room we were just in, a foot behind me, is gone. It’s like the emptiness of the void in the walls of this hallway absorbs the light from the other room before my eyes can detect it.

  “Careful where you step. There’s a bit of a climb.” Michael is above me, and ahead. I follow the sound of his voice.

  We walk upward for what seems like a long time, and then the passageway descends again. It’s still pitch black. I’m so focused on putting one foot in front of the other, making sure that there’s floor beneath each step, that I can’t think about anything else. The moment I realize that, fear takes me, and I’m sure that I’m going to fall. My left foot clips the back of my right heel, and I sway trying to regain my balance. “Michael!” I reach out for him, but I grab at empty space.

  Michael catches my arm at the elbow and grabs my wrist with his other hand, but we both fall. I’m expecting to hit my head on the wall, and when that doesn’t happen, the floor, but we keep falling. We tumble together, but there’s no point of reference to tell how far. A speck of light appears in the distance. It grows large as we careen toward it. I shield my eyes with my free hand, the brightness is overwhelming. We slam into the floor and the whole world quakes around us.

  For a moment, I have no idea what’s going on. I’m shocked to be alive. I look at my right arm, stunned that it’s not broken, then I turn my head back to look up at where we’ve fallen from. A black circle in the ceiling swirls and fades to white as the ceiling light seems to heal the dark fissure from all sides. We’re back in the hub room. The white capsule walls are broken on the side with the six doors.

  “How?” It’s all I can manage to say. I start inspecting myself for damage from the fall, amazed that I can move all my limbs and that I feel no real pain. I assume I’m in shock, but I can’t find any bruises, or any sign that we fell as far as it seemed.

  “I think it’s leaking. The code they’re using to rewrite reality is all buggy and leaking. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is what’s been affecting people’s ability to sleep.” He stands and dusts himself off. Caked dirt comes off his jeans and falls to the floor in clumps. He helps me up.

  I check my clothes, finding the same filth clinging to my pants. It’s like when we fell we accumulated a layer of mud that’s had time to dry.

  “C’mon,” he says.

  “I don’t think I can go through that again.”

  “I don’t think you’ll have to.”

  Instead of the empty-space connector, the door now leads to a well-lit hall. Halfway through there’s another partition. On one side of the partition, the walls are covered in circuit diagrams. On the other side, they’re carved from a pale blue stone. Etched into the blue wall there’s a series of letters that look like a combination of Linear A and cuneiform. I’ve seen these before. It takes me a moment to place the memory, but I saw these on the spines of books in the store in my dream. It also occurs to me that if the diagrams on the other side of the wall were merged with the characters on this side, that the result would be what I saw in the binders in the warehouse library.

  The end of the passageway opens back to the sitting room where we’d come in.

  I spin around to face Michael. “Did we go the wrong way?”

  “No. The way things work here… They’re not always linear. Here. I think I’ve found it.”

  “What you’re looking for?”


  “No. But the way to get it.”

  ~

  Michael grasps a pipe on the wall. “This insulates bundles of cabling.” He follows it from the library, and we come to a larger room, a storage area holding masses of cubic containers. The cables lead to a node, which connects to a system of file drawers. Each drawer is about my height and is as wide and deep as it is tall.

  “If you don’t consider what you’ve seen so far proof enough…” He opens one of the drawers.

  A mass of flesh, wrinkled and pink like a brain, fills the cubic container like bread dough that’s expanded too far to fit its mixing bowl. Steam rises off of it. It smells like rotten broccoli.

  “According to the label, these are people with names starting with the letter A, and birthdays in 1970.”

  “What do you mean ‘these are people?’ How can this be people?”

  “Think of consciousness as data.”

  “So this is a big hard drive?”

  “Sort of. In order to both store and use that consciousness they assembled a mix of biology and microelectronics.” He points at the pipes and cables. “The network brings instructions in and data out to the library. The pipes pump in nutrients to sustain the brain mass, as well as instructions to process before being relayed back to the bodies.”

  “To what end? What do they, whoever they are, get from this?” It’s too much. I step back to catch my balance. The enormity of it all… The room spins. I close my eyes tight until it stops spinning.

  “The data accumulation is obvious. What they’re planning to do is less so. Marketing test? Population control? Total subservience? Given the lengths they’ve gone to, all of these have pretty nasty end games.” He pushes a button on his phone and holds it between two nodes of the machine that look like an inverted wishbone. He lets go and some invisible force holds the phone there, suspended between the nodes.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m downloading part of the data stream. There are people I can bring this to,” he pauses, “if they’ve not been taken. Maybe we can find a way to reverse it.” The display on his phone flashes through an array of colors.

  “Maybe we should start breaking things.”

  “If we do, it could have disastrous consequences for the people they have in storage.”

  “Worse than mindlessly shopping or toiling for the benefit of unseen slave masters?”

  He looks back at me. His expression is worried, like he’s afraid I’m going to lose whatever sanity I have left. “That’s a good point, but let’s see if we can fix it before we start breaking things.”

  “Reserve the right to break things later? I can accept that.”

  His phone beeps. “Right. I think that’s got it.” He retrieves his phone and presses another button before putting it back in his pocket.

  “What now?” I ask.

  “I’m thinking getting the hell away from here at best speed would be prudent.”

  I nod and follow him quickly toward what I hope is the exit.

  ~

  The trip back to the car is a running battle with paranoia. The warehouse may have been unguarded, but instead of watching my footing back through the dark parking lot, I keep turning to look over my shoulder for imagined pursuers.

  After weeks of heat, tonight it’s cloudless and cold, and my lungs ache after the climb over the fence and the fast walk back to the car. I sit in the passenger seat, letting my breath out slow, trying to calm down. I look over at Michael. His hands shake so much he struggles to get the key into the ignition. Even then he doesn’t start the car.

  “Shouldn’t we be going?”

  “Seeing the inside of that place… I’m not sure I want to drive now. What happens if we get caught? Maybe we should just go inside that house.” He points to one of the houses with a second-story addition. “They probably have food that’s just going to spoil in their kitchen. We could have a good meal. Make the most of whatever time we have.”

  “Don’t you need to get that data to your friends?”

  He breathes in deep, steadying himself. “Yes. You’re right. The greater good. We should get going. It’s almost light. We might be able to drive without the headlights drawing attention to us.”

  “What about the brake lights?”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard to disable.” Michael opens the glove compartment and pulls out a small tool case. “I’ll take care of the fuses. Why don’t you drive.”

  The sky hits its predawn blue glow by the time we start off. I drive slowly at first, giving my eyes the chance to adjust, but then I start to worry about how long it will take to get there and I hit the accelerator.

  The rotors of a helicopter thunder overhead. I look through the driver’s side window. There’s no sign of the helicopter and no lights in the mirrors. I make a right turn, and the rearview mirror lights up bright white, followed by a siren and red and blue lights.

  Michael looks confused. “What do we do now? Do we run?”

  “What if the cops are just cops?”

  “What are the chances of that?”

  “You mean why are they pulling us over? The one car they’ve seen all night? And it has no brake lights or even headlights?” I look back, hoping to judge if there’s anything different about the police car, but all I see is the bright glare of their lights.

  “If the police still exist as an agency, whose side do you think they’re on?”

  “When my mom went missing, the cops at the police station seemed friendly. Just as confused as the rest of us.” I don’t know what else to say, but then I remember back to college. “Michael, all those times when we were out of our heads on psychedelics, we always remembered to stop and remind ourselves that we can’t trust our perceptions. How do we know we can trust what we’ve seen now? Besides, what chance do we have of outrunning them?”

  “We don’t,” he says, “And you’re right. We can’t outrun them.”

  I pull over to the curb.

  “Remember, we’ve done nothing wrong. If they try to do anything more than write a fix it ticket for the lights, I think we’re right to run. It might be hopeless, but if they’re in on it, we’ve nothing to lose.”

  The cops put their searchlight straight into the side mirror. I stare into the mirrored light hoping for a better look. Their silhouettes come toward us in herky-jerky motion, like they can’t manage their own limbs.

  The first cop comes up to the driver’s side and shines his flashlight straight into my eyes. I squint and roll down the window.

  “State your purpose,” the cop says. Static buzzes punctuate each word.

  “You should’ve mentioned that our lights weren’t on,” Michael says.

  A whirling sound is followed by a series of clicks. “What?”

  Michael reaches past me and flashes the cop with the phone. It blares that same modem handshake squeal it made in the mall, and the cop falls to the ground the same way the mall security guard fell. Michael swings his door open and bolts for the sidewalk. I open my door and bowl over the kneeling cop. His face is human, but he has some strange clockwork mechanism attached to his ear. It’s like a Bluetooth, but with moving parts, a mix of gears and segmented skin that looks like a bug’s carapace. I step over him and run toward Michael.

  Two more cops have him by the arms. Sirens scream from blocks away. More sets of red and blue lights flash. I slam into the cop holding Michael and kick at the other. I miss, but he lets go of Michael’s arm.

  The cop Michael zapped with the phone has recovered. He grabs my arm. “You’re under arrest,” he whirs. His free hand is balled into a fist. When he opens it a bright flash bursts from his palm. Light floods my vision before everything dims and goes black.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  White light tears into my eyes. From there, pain shoots toward my temples. My vision halos and blurs and I realize my eyes are open, that I’m staring into a bright fluorescent tube-light bolted to the ceiling. My back aches so badly, the best I can do is
roll over on my side. I’m on a cot. I can see well enough to tell that I’m in a jail cell, and that I’m alone. Even as I regain focus, the edges of my vision remain blurred, making everything I see like a film being shot through a camera with Vaseline rubbed on the edges of the lens.

  My mouth is so dry it feels like my tongue will crack and dissolve to sand.

  I manage to stand. I step around a puddle in the center of the floor and grab onto the bars to steady myself. My cell is the only one with the light on. The other cells are dark and empty. I rattle the bars, confirming that I am locked in.

  “Are we awake?” A man’s voice calls from down the hall. A young man in a sheriff’s deputy uniform arrives at my cell. He asks, “Are you feeling any better?” He has short black hair and is clean shaven. He speaks evenly, and though I can’t quite focus my vision, I don’t see clockwork attachments on his head.

  “My head hurts.” My throat stings as I speak.

  “I’m not surprised. They said you’d really tied one on last night. I’ll get you some water.” He smiles and points down the hall. “Don’t go anywhere.” He laughs.

  I try to remember what happened. It all comes in flashes like scenes cut from a movie and played together in their own separate reel. I see police, flashing lights, a vomit filled floor of a squad car, and the blaring and buzzing voices panicked on the police radio. I rub my temples, hoping I can squeeze the memories out and everything will be put right.

  The deputy returns and hands me a plastic water bottle through the bars.

  I drink and let my forehead rest on the cool metal of the bars. “Thanks for that. Can I make a phone call?”