Sleeper Protocol

by Kevin Ikenberry

  The first chance I got, I’d start learning the information they didn’t appear to want me knowing. I leaned back against the pillow and closed my eyes.

  The vividness of the dream kept my attention though I desperately wanted to wake up. I knew I was dreaming, and as much as I wanted it to stop, I held on for any shred of information I could get.

  The heat was unrelenting and everywhere. Grit from the godforsaken desert found my eyes, my mouth, and every nook and cranny of the splotched combat uniform I wore. The relative cool of the headquarters building ran down my sweaty neck, and as I removed my individual ballistic armor—sixty pounds of life-saving ceramic plates—the sweat on my back slicked cold and started to evaporate. I hung my vest and helmet on a series of rigid hooks and negotiated the gathered officers and soldiers toward the front of the building. A plywood bulletin board rested against the front wall with maps and graphics of both current and planned missions. A calendar, days that had passed marked with large black Xs, hung on the wall. One hundred ninety-eight days in Afghanistan—eighty days to go.

  The American flag adorned one corner at the front, the Texas flag in another, there as it was supposed to be in our partnering National Guard command’s headquarters. I liked the guardsmen. They were solid troops, patrolling with us every day and fighting insurgents and cowards.

  I spoke to a few people, some peers, and found my seat on the center aisle. Everyone milled about and waited for the briefing to start. My brigade commander, Colonel Mudge, slapped a hand on my shoulder briefly before striding to the front of the room. The host-brigade commander followed, one of his aides calling the room to attention as the balding colonel clumped to the front of the room like John Wayne.

  An officer I did not know introduced Colonel Mudge, who began to brief the mission. Mudge was the kind of guy I’d have followed to hell. He was funny but had a spine of steel. He vigorously protected us from the bullshit requirements of higher headquarters, things like wearing a bright-yellow protective belt for safety reasons—all that did was make you a target. As he introduced the officers, a commotion at the back of the room caught Mudge’s attention, and he stopped talking and stared.

  A man yelled, “Stay where you are, Lieutenant!”

  “No! I need to see Colonel Mudge right now! It’s important!”

  Urgent and shrill, the voice echoed off the plaster walls, and I was filled with dread. It was one of my platoon leaders, Danny Spencer, just in from patrol. I turned my head and strained to see Lieutenant Spencer pushing through the crowd. Combat uniform dark with sweat and blood, the dark-haired lieutenant limped into the room with his vest undone and his eyes wild. Class of 2011, Indiana University, degree in history, my mind whispered. Engaged, with a child on the way. Not the kind of guy to burst into a high-level meeting looking like he just slaughtered a camel.

  “Colonel Mudge! I need to speak with you.”

  Mudge glanced at me. I was in for a world-class ass chewing later. “Now is not the time or the place, Lieutenant.”

  Spencer laughed in a hysterical voice I did not recognize. “You tell us that your first rule is to let you know if someone is in danger, no matter the time or the place.”

  Mudge squared his shoulders to the lieutenant. “Get to the point, Spencer.”

  Spencer stopped in the center aisle, a few meters away, and came to the position of attention, but his hands were open and trembling. “Sir, I need to report a terrible crime.”

  “This isn’t the time—”

  “The hell it’s not!” Spencer yelled. “You want to know when someone is in danger, right? Then you’re going to listen to me, goddammit!”

  Redness crept into Mudge’s face. He stared at me, and I stood.

  “Danny, get back to the CQ,” I said. “We’ll discuss this later. I want you to see the padre before I—”

  “Shut up!” Spencer stepped forward, inches from my face. “A woman is dead, and none of you even care!”

  “Where, Danny?” I lowered my voice in an effort to calm him down.

  The eyes of more than thirty people with higher rank than my captain’s bars were focused on me. Anger and embarrassment threatened to take away the last vestiges of my military bearing. That would only make the whole damned situation worse.

  “Right here on base. I tried to save her, sir. I really tried. She’s in my room. I couldn’t save her. He killed her!” Spencer leveled a finger at Mudge. “He killed her! He puts us out there every day and sits back here drinking coffee and all that bullshit! We saw things! They tried to kill us!”

  I stepped toward the aisle with the stares of thirty men and women on me. I was never going to live this down. “Danny, knock it off. There’s a woman in your quarters?”

  “He has to atone for his crimes, sir!”

  Spencer stepped around me, and I saw something under his armor, glinting in the fluorescent light. He ran three steps down the aisle toward Mudge. Time slowed down as I went after him.

  “He killed her! He killed her!” Spencer screamed, spit flecking my arms as I tackled him from behind and wrestled him to the ground.

  I fought to grab his wrists, to keep his hands away from the trigger of whatever weapon he was carrying. Our chests ended up together, and the fetid stench of vomit and blood coated my face. His hand worked between us, trying to get under his vest. This couldn’t be happening.

  “Bomb!” I yelled, but the crowd didn’t move. I yelled louder, and they scattered like rats. “Bomb!”

  Spencer’s blazing eyes met mine, and there was no recognition, only hatred. There was a flash of light, and then the heat returned, only more ferocious and intense than the desert outside. The light reached up and pulled me into darkness.

  As I woke, thrashing, I knocked over a rolling table and crashed to the floor. There was screaming, and I knew it was mine, but I couldn’t stop it. Tears stung my face, and I moaned something even I couldn’t understand, through spit and snot, as the nurses rushed in. A man in a long white coat followed them with a syringe at the ready.

  “Hold him!”

  They were going to hurt me.

  “We’re trying to help you! We’re here to help you!” a nurse said in my ear, and as I lashed toward her, a pinch on my neck brought heat and numbness that spread like wildfire through my body.

  My limbs didn’t respond, and I slumped to the cold tile floor. “What are you doing to me?” I moaned and began to sob. Pins and needles ran over my body as whatever drug they’d given me took full effect. My vision swam, and my mouth dried up. “What am I?” No answers came.

  My vision tunneled as I whispered, “Why aren’t you helping me?” The blackness returned. I’m not alive at all. I’m dead.

  Chapter Two

  An hour passed before Major General Adam Crawley entered the hospital room. At the door, he paused for a full three minutes to make sure the subject was asleep before walking forward. His dress-uniform shoes squeaked on the polished tile floor. The young man slept peacefully, his mouth slightly open, from the administration of a sleeping agent. Crawley watched him breathe rhythmically. The shock of the nightmare would make it memorable to the subject. As much as Crawley wanted to wake up the young man and tell him the truth, the rules said he could not. If anyone could have overwritten them, it would have been him.

  Crawley tilted his chin slightly toward the ceiling and spoke softly. “All sensors disengage. Override Crawley Delta Two.”

  Outside, in the control areas of the ward, screens would blink into standby mode so that Crawley could have a moment by himself. He trusted his staff, but some things were meant to be his and his alone. Crawley allowed himself a small smile. In his hand was a book familiar to everyone in the Integration Center, though no one knew its importance. The old brown leather was cracked in places and worn smooth in others, and the book stayed closed
most of the time, but Crawley carried it like a talisman. “I hope you’re worth all the trouble, son.”

  Crawley believed the young man would be worth it. All of the research, official and not, said he could make the difference. Time was not their only enemy. Then again, without the drastic events of the last conflict, neither of them would have ever been in the same room. If another war was to be won, their interaction was absolutely necessary.

  The Styrahi brought the ability to transfer memory from one generation to the next. In the years before the Great War, the Terran Defense Force imprinted two hundred genetic descendants of twenty-first century soldiers. Not long after, a nefarious alien race known only as the Greys attacked the Outer Rim. The Terran Council believed that the war was a construct intended to make humanity devolve from their mass passivity to something more primitive.

  With the war over and the Greys defeated, Earth’s leaders had further trimmed their tiny military forces. “Unnecessary expenses in life and money,” they said. Earth was trying to withdraw from its role in the galaxy, a move that would have dire consequences if it succeeded. If the Greys returned, there was no question in Crawley’s mind that they would not only target Earth but also eliminate it. The Greys were unlike any enemy the sentient races of the galaxy had ever encountered. Their very presence and early offensives sent the collected allies in search of new friends to bring to the fight.

  The first alien race to make contact with Earth had been the Vemeh nearly two hundred years earlier. They came in search of the great warriors who’d split the atom, and they found a passive, peaceful planet instead. The Vemeh asked the Styrahi for help in recruiting Earth to help defend the galaxy, counting on the existence of humans who were engaged enough to strongly fight for their beliefs and who would be willing to give their lives to protect Earth. The insectoid Vemeh needed an ally capable of fighting the Greys with powerful weaponry and committed soldiers. They believed that humans were, if anything, able to learn forgotten ways. The Grey assaults on the Outer Rim in the early twenty-third century had been too far away for common earthlings to take seriously. Over the course of human history, when the populace had failed to act, politicians had jumped in full bore. But rather than embrace their new allies and take the race farther into the stars, political leaders had voted unanimously for the opposite approach.

  Stupid bastards. “Earth First” had banished all of the Terran Defense Force imprints to points outside the solar system, but that wasn’t enough. The hardy souls who’d pushed out and created permanent colonies were also recalled and their ships decommissioned. No one on Earth would study war. The Terran Defense Force accepted the role of training poor imitations of armies called “militias.” Critical weapons of war were destroyed by the millions, though none was as conspicuously missed as the ability to lead men into combat. Worse, the very aliens who’d presented the human race with the keys to the galaxy were banned to the outer planets and Luna.

  “Sorry to have to do that to you, son.” Crawley grimaced and sighed at the same time. “Even dreams can be manipulated. I cannot take the chance you won’t remember who you are.” He glanced up at the sensor arrays, now quiet by design. That he alone knew the identity of the young man, and what he was capable of, was a fact no one else could know.

  Crawley went quietly to the door. Turning his back on the small hospital room, he whispered, “Don’t prove me wrong.”

  My screaming headache told me that the events in my dream had really happened and that my thrashing and fighting were as real as the dream had seemed. A tall glass of juice and a medicine cup rested on the rolling table. I sat up, drank some juice, and stared at the medicine for several minutes before deciding to take it. The staff really had done nothing but attempt to help me. There was no reason to believe that anyone here would hurt me. With more thought, guilt about my reaction to the dream and how the staff had wrestled me to the ground weighed on me, and embarrassment was piled onto that just for fun. I wondered how I could meet any of their faces.

  The window was dark, and the lights of downtown Sydney shone through low clouds and fog. The dream felt so vivid that parts of it stuck with me, but others faded with every heartbeat. That I could remember the names of others was strange, considering that I couldn’t remember my own. In my dream, I’d been a soldier—that was clear. The young lieutenant, Spencer, had called me “sir.”

  What does that mean? Was I in a position of authority or something? Nobody in the hospital would answer that question for me. Anything I wanted to find out about myself would have to come from outside. I’d have to ask questions and experience things beyond a boring hospital room. The screen on the wall across from my bed was unfamiliar. I smirked. “How do I turn the television on?”

  A weather-radar screen flashed on, and my mouth fell open. “Holy shit.” After a minute or so, the radar remained unchanged. “Change channel.”

  The screen beeped but did nothing. Obviously, that wasn’t going to work. I changed tactics. “Find football.”

  The scene shifted from the clear radar pattern to a soccer match. Dammit. At least I was getting somewhere. “I don’t want to watch soccer. I want football.”

  The screen shifted again to something that I recognized, after a few moments of gleeful enjoyment, as being Australian rules football. “What about baseball?”

  The screen beeped but did nothing.

  “News?”

  Nothing.

  “Movies?”

  Nothing.

  “Funny animal videos?”

  Sure enough, the scene changed. Apparently, the television, or whatever it was, knew the rules, too. That would make things difficult. “Back to Australian rules football.”

  At least there was something to watch while I waited for breakfast. I didn’t recognize the teams. The Madrid Matadors and the Toronto Titans?

  “Keyboard?” I asked, but the screen did not change. “Access my medical records.”

  Text appeared across the game. “Not permitted.”

  “Show my vital statistics.”

  “Not permitted.”

  I scowled and thought about what sequence of words would work until the door swung open.

  “Good mornin’.” Doctor Garrett entered the room exactly as he’d done the previous morning but without the tray of syringes. “Had a heck of a dream, did ya? Remember anything?”

  “How long was I out?” I yawned and tried to sit up straighter on the bed. “All day?”

  “About twenty hours now,” Garrett answered. “Anything new? You look like something’s bothering ya.”

  I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and told him about my dream, which I recalled with nearly as much clarity as I’d had while I was experiencing it. All of the details were vivid, but nothing resonated. I had to make sense of it. “You’re here to help me, right?”

  “Yes.” Garrett smiled. “That whole response-team reaction is to protect you, mate. It’s a standard operating procedure, so to speak. We didn’t want you to hurt yourself or anyone else. Dreams are like that. Not surprised you didn’t dream about flying or falling, even a car accident or something. First dreams are scary. I mean, you haven’t had one you remembered until now, right?”

  “No.” I paused. “What if it wasn’t a dream?”

  “Why do you say that?” Garrett asked. “Dreams are very seldom real. You might dream something about people you knew, but the context could be wrong. Or the situation is correct but all the people are complete unknowns. What about it bothers you?”

  I told him about the names I remembered. The once-vivid details blurred at the edges. I held tightly to the names and recounted as much of it as I could.

  He fell into the chair beside my bed. “Anything from your dream might have been true, like your colonel’s name, for example. Given time, you can marry it up with other memo
ries as they return. Some of that dream will fade, but the really important stuff tends to stick.”

  I wanted to believe him. All of the little thoughts in my head were confusing at best. My trust in Garrett built with every conversation, but I couldn’t rely on our conversations alone. I liked the man, but I wanted him to answer my questions instead of asking more of his own. “Can I have a notebook?”

  “What?” The curious squint on his face made me laugh.

  “A pen and paper? I want to write down what I remember.”

  Garrett nodded his head. “I can do that for you, mate. You’ll have everything you need to help you remember things as they come. Now, I have a bigger question for you.” He paused, and the easy smile on his face grew even bigger, if that were possible. “How’d you like to go outside?”

  “Now?”

  “No, for good.” Garrett leaned forward. “Here’s the deal, mate. We’d like to send you on a walkabout. Ever hear of that?”

  “Dropping me in the outback to survive on my own?” How did I know that?

  “Indeed.” Garrett peered over my shoulder at the window. “Experiences are everything to you. What you see, smell, taste, and feel will do more for this process than anything else. At least, that’s what we believe. You have to piece things together yourself in a slow and easy manner. Walkabout is the best way for that. Going outside will be difficult, but you’ll always be in contact with us, and I’m reasonably sure it’s going to help you put your memory back together.”

  “Because I’ve been here, to Sydney, before, and I remember it clearly?”

  “Precisely. Everything you see or do outside could affect you. That could be good or bad, I have to say. Maybe we can even get you out of here today.”