“Whatever, tough guy,” she said. “Get your ass in my office now!”
“Okay, okay, no need to yell,” he said.
“Who’s tough now,” she said pretending to flex and staring him down.
“Wow! I have no idea how to respond to that,” he said with a laugh.
He was also pretty happy that Melissa didn’t seem too broken up about Chan getting his ass kicked. He knew that Chan had the hots for her, but he wasn’t really sure if anything had materialized between the two of them. He knew that he and Melissa never had to fake it, but he had been married too, at least according to a piece of paper. There was no love anymore in his marriage, but even so, he didn’t feel that he had the right to tell Melissa who she could or could not see, and he never did.
“Please have a seat Mr. Ross,” she said turning on her professional Dr. Melissa Moore demeanor and pointing at one of the comfortable leather chairs that sat in front of her very impressive desk.
“Thank you, Ma’am,” he said knowing how much it pissed her off to be called Ma’am. He saw her nostrils flare out a bit as she thought of zinging him with a witty comeback. Instead, she said “Let’s get down to business,”. “Alright!”, he said punching his right fist into his palm for emphasis and doing his best to not start laughing.
“You’re the smartest idiot I’ve ever met,” she said to him.
“Why, thank you very little.” He answered.
She held her finger up and gave him that look that meant he should keep his big mouth shut. So he did. He heard a few clicks. She must have been flicking some switches under her desk. He could feel a strong hum as if a magnetic field had just been activated in the walls and the ceiling.
“Okay, nobody should be able to hear us now,” she said.
“Did your walls just create a magnetic field?” he asked.
“Yeah, something I did in my spare time so I could insure that I could have some privacy in this place.”
“Impressive,” he said, thinking how incredibly amazing she actually was. It was easy to forget when he was around her all the time. No wonder Emily bored the shit out of him.
“So, what is this idea you had that you wanted to tell me and everyone else in the base all about?” she asked.
He knew she had to give him one more shot. He regrouped and got his thoughts together because this was a big idea, and as far as he knew, it had never been attempted before.
“In the end what do you think will become of Bob and me?” he asked her. She didn’t have to think about it for a second.
“Bob will become a weapon of mass destruction destroying the population and be destroyed when he’s no longer of use, and you will probably be destroyed a lot sooner than that.” She answered giving him a wink and a smile.
“Thanks for using kid gloves. I appreciate it very much.”
“My pleasure,” she answered.
“So here goes. I had this revelation that if there was some way to download my consciousness into Bob we could become a symbiotic organism. In theory, I think I could awaken him and use his energy to fold time and space and create a wormhole where we could escape.” It was one of the only times that he had seen her with a blank stare on her face and at a loss for words. She actually stuttered and stammered a bit before she could even answer.
“Say what?”
“There’s this old science fiction book where beings can transport ships across the Universe with their minds. I feel that I’m at a level where I could probably do the same thing if I had more energy to work with, and Bob could be like my battery.”
“Okay, did you say probably?”
“Yeah, probably. I mean as far I know it’s never been done before”
She didn’t answer right away. Melissa rested her elbows on the desk and placed her chin in her palms. It was her classic thinking position, and he had learned over the years not to bother her when she was in the position. So he didn’t. He sat back in the fine leather chair and let her think away at her big fancy desk.
She was deep in thought and it was a few minutes before he could see in her eyes that she was back from her contemplation of his idea.
“I have to say I can’t wrap my mind around what you’re proposing. I don’t understand how it could be possible.”
He understood where she was coming from. “You see that’s the thing. It’s not about understanding how to do it. I feel that I can do it and I think that the harder I try to do it the harder it will be. I feel that I have to surrender to the process and allow my abilities to do their thing.”
She gave him a perplexed look and her head actually turned sideways like a dog does when it doesn’t understand what you’re telling it.
“Pardon my French,” she said. “But that’s the craziest fucking idea I think I ever heard.”
He smiled at her. “Exactly, that’s why I think it will work.”
Chapter 21
Eric was back in his cage for the night but that was okay. He needed some time to himself. He sat down in the corner, his favorite spot, in the half lotus position closed his eyes and began to meditate. He wasn’t just sitting there and twiddling his thumbs. This was an exploration and journey for his consciousness.
It was during a meditation when he came up with the idea that he could download his consciousness into Bob and together they could escape this prison. He deeply relaxed his body and did his best to quiet that pestering voice in the back of his head and took slow deep breaths in through his nose and out through mouth. His head was getting warm, and he could feel his consciousness, or essence of who he really was, began to stir within.
It must be the nanobots doing their thing, he thought, but it wasn’t. It was the merging of the energy that was him with the energy that creates reality which was a far more powerful combination than he could ever realize. It was there for anyone to access who could figure out how to do it and that’s what he was doing.
At first, his essence was stiff and unpliable but as he relaxed more he felt it begin to spiral side to side like a tree flowing with the wind. It pulled him backwards out of his brain, and he started to see sparks and flashes of light, or synapses connecting, and way off in the distance of his consciousness he saw a thin band of silver energy. No, it wasn’t a band, it was a wave, and it was coming right at him.
He decided to sit back and enjoy the show. like the aurora borealis, it passed over him and through him and fed him with a burst of energy that made him vibrate, tingle and feel the most alive that he had ever felt despite being in this world of supposed nothingness.
It felt more real to him than walking down the street. There was something here that he was supposed to learn, or maybe it was something that he had already known but had somehow forgotten. He floated in the nothingness, but it was still somethingness.
It was a fine aware energy that wanted him to awaken. He could feel it. It was attempting, in a very gentle way, to persuade him to awaken. To remember. It was what would allow him to merge with Bob and bend time and space so they could both escape.
He wanted more and began to push toward the energy to grab more data, but as he pushed harder he could feel it pull away. He could sense that the data came on the energy’s terms not on his terms. He realized what an insignificant little blip he was in this vast ocean of energy. He could only compare it to being like a grain of sand floating in all the oceans of the world, but the scope was even bigger than that.
Astounding! He could feel his legs beginning to cramp and his brain and body were getting cranky and bringing him back to his spot in the corner of his cage. He opened his eyes and the lab was dark, but the air was all fuzzy and everything seemed to be out of sorts bending and trying to reform back to its normal shape. It was totally cool and like nothing he had ever experienced.
Eric needed to get up and stretch because his legs were cramping, but he was stuck. How long had he been gone? It felt like five minutes but it had to have been closer to an hour because of the way his legs and bac
k felt. He carefully unfolded his legs and pushed them out in front of him and reached out and grabbed his toes and stretched. His back was kinking up too.
“I’m not a kid anymore,” he laughed.
He got up and walked around a bit, had a drink of water, and used the bathroom. Thankfully, they had built one for him with walls so he could have privacy, which he appreciated very much. As far as a cage went, it had become more like a studio apartment with bars, but he enjoyed calling it a cage. It helped him realize that he was in a prison no matter where he went.
He was starting to question everything about the true nature of reality. He was beginning to feel like one of those old spiritual masters who used to meditate in caves for months. Eventually they would come out and say - life is but an illusion. What did they really mean by that he wondered?
The truth of It was a lot heavier and more real than most people could comprehend. If a normal person thought about it, really thought about the fact that life was but an illusion, they would probably get dizzy and pass out because as Jack Nicholson said, you can’t handle the truth.
He wasn’t sure if he could either. As he paced back and forth in his cage he became weary and tired and his bed beckoned. He settled down on the bed and when his head hit the pillow his eyelids became heavier and heavier, and he was out. But not really - he was in a dream and it was so strange. He was back with some of his friends in elementary school and they were kids but they were playing in the backyard of Emily’s house with Ganesh. They were playing tag and throwing the ball for Ganesh and it warmed his heart seeing his dog having such a good time playing with a gang of kids. But there was something else there too. He couldn’t see it but he could feel it. It was an observer. It was the energy and it was prodding him and pushing him to come to a realization that hadn’t dawned on him. What was it, he wondered? He watched the kids that he used to play with over thirty years ago and his dog. They weren’t really those kids and that wasn’t really Ganesh, but they were acting exactly the way that he remembered them. They were acting the way that he thought they should be acting.
He began to realize that they were all just extensions of himself. Were they there for his enjoyment or a distraction? He wasn’t sure. For some strange reason he put his hands up in front of his face and moved them back and forth and he could feel it shaking him awake within the dream. He was dreaming in his dream. This was a dream after all so he should be able to do whatever he wanted to. Why not.
Eric felt the pull from all the kids and Ganesh too. They seemed to be waiting for his instructions. He was pulling his focus away from them. They began to slow down and were now walking around. It actually started to remind him of what it must look like at a mental institution when they brought out the patients to walk around in the grass. At least the ones that were heavily medicated shuffling their feet and hanging their heads not really knowing where they were or what they were doing. He felt bad but they weren’t real he kept telling himself, and he jumped off the porch where he had been standing.
He floated slowly down to the ground, and then bound across the backyard like he was walking on the moon. Effortlessly, he jumped over the ten-foot tall fence around the backyard as if he were Superman. He was flying, but as he came over the wall Eric realized it wasn’t the neighbor’s yard.
It was a cluster of Suns, planets and asteroids. He was in space and it was stunningly beautiful and dead silent, but he could feel the heat coming from the suns. He looked down at his body but he wasn’t there. He was nothing, so how could he feel the heat? He felt a pull toward a brilliant bluish-white star then a strong tug and “pop” he materialized right in front of the sun. The surface of the star was ferocious. It churned like hundreds of angry oceans and spat out plasma thousands of miles into the air. It was alive, but in a different way from him. He could see the data in the beams of light. Everything went into extremely slow motion as if he were being shown something that required his complete attention.
He had just jumped across the vastness of space to this star. He had a precognitive vision. Right before he jumped to the sun, he saw the path he was going to take to get there to ensure he wouldn’t crash into an asteroid or something else. Then he took that path. He was in a dream and pretty sure that if he had hit something he would have passed right through it. Then everything began to swirl and get crazy and “poof” just like that he woke up in bed back in his very own personal cage.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep. It couldn’t have been long because he was still pretty tired and it was still dark. The digital clock off in the distance said it was one thirty in the morning. He had been asleep for a few hours but was still exhausted. Even though it was a dream, he had expended a lot of energy.
Eric had some protein bars in his cage so he ate a couple and washed it down with cranberry juice and laid back down in bed. As dreams always do, he could slowly feel what he had experienced begin to float away, but he was trying to hold on to whatever he could. He knew he should write it down but for some reason he didn’t. It felt like the hardest most arduous task imaginable, but he could remember something about data in the light and precognition of his path.
He repeated those things to himself like a mantra. Then, he heard a noise in the lab. It sounded like someone bumping into something and suddenly he was wide awake. He could feel every hair on his body standing on end and could feel the energy rushing through him. He was experiencing the classic fight or flight response. His sensory scanned the room. Someone was there he could feel it.
He slid off the bed as quietly as a mouse, and carefully stuck his pillows under the blankets to make it look like he was in bed. He crawled across the floor and into his little makeshift bathroom and crunched himself onto the floor on the other side of the toilet.
He could feel the presence and it was someone familiar. It was his old pal Chan. He knew that no one could hold a grudge like Chan. Even so this was very uncharacteristic of him to be doing something that he couldn’t get away with. That is, unless he was sent by someone.
He could hear and feel Chan breathing. He was nervous and scared and he may have been one the best remote viewers to ever live, but a Ninja he would never be. Eric was trapped. He had nowhere to go. All he could do was wait for the inevitable to happen.
Then he heard the quiet hiss of three bullets being fired through a silencer and the dull thud of them hitting the pillows under the sheets. The emergency lights came on and he could hear Chan banging into things as he ran away to get out of the lab.
He was sure Chan would be caught, but he did have to make sure he wasn’t caught at the scene by the wrong people. Eric knew his days or even hours were numbered and he had to figure out a way to merge with Bob, fast.
Chapter 22
Bob was very happy. He had again found Dr. Patel and been given an important assignment. This assignment was going to require some very tough decisions on his part, but he had come to the conclusion that it had to be done, especially since Dr. Patel was guiding him on this journey.
The patterns of light he had been chasing brought new meaning to him; he had a new purpose - to focus on his mission. However, something continued to bother him. He couldn’t remember where he had met Dr. Patel. All that he knew was that he was very important to Bob and he was supposed to be Bob’s creator and mentor. Or, more like a father figure. That was the feeling he had when he pondered within. It puzzled him because he wasn’t sure why he felt that way.
The green beam of light passed by him and impulsively he followed it without a second thought. He admired the patterns and the data that was constructed into the light. He focused in on the data and became smaller and smaller to get a microscopic view. He could see that there was programming in there, and he was quite surprised when it began to open up to him. Bob could see there was a solution to the problem that he was pondering within the green light.
It was, at least how he saw it, a humane way to put wide swaths of the population to sleep quickl
y and painlessly. He could see people had specific DNA similarities like skin color, hair color and eye color and even age groups. He could target specific groups and turn off a switch in their brains and they would cease functioning immediately. He was surprised that it was much like turning off a computer.
He continued following the green beam of light and attempted to harvest more data, but for some reason it started pushing him away. This made him want to go deeper and learn more, but then they reached the end of the line and the green beam was gone. He was left sitting in the darkness to contemplate what he had just learned.
He could feel a slight tugging in his mind that there was more here than he could remember. He did find it rather strange and silly that he had this amazing intelligence and comprehension level, but he couldn’t remember anything except what he had recently learned from Dr. Patel.
He was getting ready to dive deeper into himself when the red beam of energy came by very slowly. It was like dangling a piece of string in front of a cat. He couldn’t resist and left his deeper thoughts alone and chased after the slow moving red beam. Bob knew that light was supposed to move very fast, so how was this moving so slowly? He could see the data in the light and recalled that he had gleaned some very important information from another light source. He became as small as possible and went into the beam but was pushed back. He could see the data but couldn’t unlock it. He found this to be very, very frustrating. He continued following the beam of light but there was something different this time. He wondered for a split second why he was doing this - it seemed silly and pointless. For a split of a split of a second.
Then he was back in the darkness and again thought of Dr. Patel and how good it was to see him again. How thankful he was to have been given a mission with such purpose. He was excited to be able to improve the health of the planet. He was also excited at how well the human race would be able to thrive if the population was reduced dramatically.
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