“Sit down.” He commanded.
“But if he agitates the subject,”—referring to Mr. Reynolds—“with the state he’s in…” the concerned spectator tried to point out.
“If my assumption is correct,” interrupted Dr. Crangler, with menacing calm, “this is the subject’s doing. Just give it a few moments, let me see what happens.” Dr. Crangler tapped a small ear bud in his ear. “Mr. Summons. Mr. Summons.” Geoffrey showed no sign of response. In fact, he had not responded to anything the doctor spoke into his ear bud since he entered the room.
A few long, tense moments passed and Geoffrey slowly calmed down. He stared at the living remains of Mr. Reynolds more acutely as he took less cautious steps toward the flattened body. Dr. Crangler couldn’t see Geoffrey’s face directly, but the cameras hidden in the walls showed every aspect of both men on separate monitors he had set up for the purpose. From these monitors he could see that as Geoffrey approached Mr. Reynolds, he had an expression on his face as if he was, indeed, listening to something.
Dr. Crangler gasped. “I was correct. The subject is communicating with Mr. Summons.”
“But, he isn’t saying anything.” the spectator from earlier observed.
“He’s communicating with Mr. Summons…telepathically.” The doctor was now standing inches away from one of the monitors, as if he could somehow delve into the phenomena better, the nearer he drew to the image on the screen.
“Are you sure?” one of the others in the room asked, with more than some excitement in his voice, “If he is, then this changes everything.”
“Silence!” Dr. Crangler demanded. Geoffrey was calling for something.
“Notebook and paper!” he yelled.
“Notebook and paper!” echoed Dr. Crangler from the other side of the mirror. The doctor sent one of his assistances to carry them to Geoffrey, while he continued his observation of the situation. The assistant stood at the door until the locking mechanism unlatched, opened the door to as small a crack as possible, and threw the pad and pen into the narrow opening. Geoffrey retrieved the pen and pad and returned to his telepathic friend. Standing in front of him, he began to write furiously. He wrote like this until he filled the entire notebook. He called for another, and then another. This went on for almost three hours, until he had filled every page of every notebook, front and back. Other than occasionally halting to retrieve another hastily tossed notebook, he didn’t stop for a break or a breath, in between. He didn’t stop to look up at Mr. Reynolds. In fact, barely anything of him moved aside from the hand that held the notebooks and the hand that filled each of them to the brim with cryptic writing. When he finally finished the third notebook, he backed into the mirror behind him and slid slowly to the floor like a man exhausted. The last of the notebooks was still clutched tightly in his grasp.
For a few long moments, he didn’t move a muscle, but remained transfixed on the severely deflated Mr. Reynolds. The wasted astronomer’s glowing eyes returned the gaze. The two sat in this posture, completely still—it didn’t even look as if Geoffrey was breathing—until at last, a startling and sudden change took place in Mr. Reynolds. He opened his eyes wide as if he was suddenly alarmed. He leaned the deflated oval of his head back, pressing hard into his chair. He held this taut position for a few long seconds and gradually the glow that characterized his shrunken flesh faded from his extremities, moving into his eyes. As this was happening, the light in his eyes intensified. Geoffrey gazed on motionlessly, and so did every person watching from the other side of the mirror. Once the last of the glow had gathered into his eyes, it loomed there for a moment and from there, faded as well. It dissipated from his open sockets like thick steam and disappeared into the open air of the room. In a flash, the lights went dark and the every monitor on the other side of the mirror filled with static. The listening devices wired into the walls of the room also went dead.
About fifteen minutes passed, but it felt like a verifiable eternity since no one could see what, if anything, was taking place in Mr. Reynolds’s room. Dr. Crangler was not about to step foot in the room’s suddenly dark recesses and he knew that none of his assistants would either, no matter how stern the directive. Everyone just remained where they were, too astonished to speak, too astonished to stir, too astonished to draw much breath. Eventually, the lights in the room re-illumined, which was noteworthy of itself. The lights in the facility were not like normal lights: Complex physical and chemical reactions fueled by electrical currents that could be stopped and reinstituted at will. As the doctor already mentioned, these lights were actually physical presences simply housed in containment units, so for them to go out and come back on wasn’t like a normal light responding to a simple power outage. It was more like water leaking from a container and suddenly reappearing back in its place a few moments later. This did not escape Dr. Crangler’s notice, but it was not something worthy of his full attention at the present.
What was worth Dr. Crangler’s notice, however, was the fact that when the lights returned, they showed a room with only one person in it. Geoffrey was sprawled full length on the floor, eyes closed and unmoving, with the notebook clutched tightly to his chest. His newly-telepathic associate, however, was no more. The only thing left of him was a thin coating of dust, lining the wheelchair in the same orientation as his cloth-like flesh was mere moments earlier. The monitors kicked back into life, and after a few moments, Dr. Crangler turned his attention to Geoffrey. He stared intently at Mr. Summons on the monitor nearest him.
“Thank goodness, he’s breathing!” he exclaimed, watching the young man’s chest rise and fall with some regularity. Dr. Crangler was an extremely professional man. It wasn’t often that he got so excited over the welfare of a patient. He wasn’t necessarily excited that Geoffrey survived whatever had just taken place, for his own sake, he was glad that the young man had survived because that meant that there was yet a chance for him to pick his brain and possibly immerse himself in extra-terrestrial knowledge the likes of which he never would’ve garnered from his physical experiments on the aliens. Dr. Crangler was also excited that possibly Geoffrey’s mind now contained information that may show him how The Virus could be successfully combated.
The doctor didn’t need to worry over potential information, for, in the three notebooks that Geoffrey had filled in his writing frenzy, were many more answers than could possibly be understood in a single lifetime by any one man. The books held apocryphal answers, answers that were never intended to be discovered by the likes of human kind.
Chapter 13
Once the initially paralyzing awe of what Dr. Crangler later dubbed the ‘Arnold Reynolds incident’ had subsided, the doctor entered the room Mr. Reynolds’s room and retrieved Geoffrey. It was only after the doctor had entered the room and remained alive for a long while that any of his assistants would venture in to help him. They placed Geoffrey in one of the special wheelchairs and carted him back to his room where he was monitored closely. He was unconscious for nearly four days. During this time, Dr. Crangler spent almost every waking moment poring over what Geoffrey had written in the notebooks, but for all his concerted efforts, he could make no sense of any of it. It didn’t look like any kind of language native to Earth—once the doctor had time to think it over, he supposed that he should’ve expected as much—but rather a strange dialect of symbols and seemingly random lines.
When Geoffrey finally returned to consciousness, Dr. Crangler’s was the first face he saw. Before that, the doctor had been waiting anxiously by one of his observatory monitors, alternately watching Geoffrey sleep, and combing through alien symbols struggling to make some sense of them all. As soon as the monitor showed his patient stirring for the first time in four days, he wanted to rush in and inundate him with all types of questions. The irony was not lost upon him that now he was the one with all the ‘pressing inquires’, and had it not been that he knew the eyes of his colleagues were upon him, he likely would have. In fact, he found it nerve
wracking just maintaining a professionally slow stride on his way to Geoffrey’s room. Even though in the presence of his staff, he made an official decision to ascertain Geoffrey’s state before asking him to remember what had happened, he made his way down the hall with all three notebooks neatly tucked under his arm. In truth, he didn’t remember taking them along. He had spent so much time with them over the last few days that they were like a part of him now. When he entered the room, Geoffrey was looking around blankly as if he had just arrived at the facility for the first time. He didn’t seem to notice the doctor’s presence, so Dr. Crangler took the opportunity to place the notebooks out of sight in the bottom drawer of Geoffrey’s desk.
“How are you feeling, Mr. Summons?” Dr. Crangler asked, careful not to raise his voice or make any sudden movements. Geoffrey opened his mouth but nothing came out. He cleared his throat harshly.
“Thirsty…and hungry, I think,” he finally answered.
Dr. Crangler was so excited to see that Mr. Summons had not only survived the ordeal, but appeared to be fully functional, that he could hardly contain himself. Almost instinctively, he began to reach for the notebooks in the desk drawer, but caught himself. “Do you remember anything, Mr. Summons?” he asked with equal caution.
“Thirsty…and hungry.” was the repeated response.
Dr. Crangler rose and stepped out of the room briefly. “All right, Mr. Summons, food is on the way. Now, do you remember anything?” He asked upon his return. His ill contained pleas were met with the same response. It became clear to the anxious doctor that no information would be gained from Mr. Summons until he had been given some sustenance. Quite agitated now, the doctor left the room again and returned some time later with a large container of food and another of drink. Geoffrey finished it in record time and demanded more. A second helping was produced and, after Geoffrey likewise demolished this round, he was satisfied. He pushed the empty container away and the doctor couldn’t help but notice that he indeed looked better than when he first awakened.
“Thank you. Thank you very much.” Geoffrey answered. “I felt like I was gonna die of thirst and starvation.” Dr. Crangler opened his mouth, but Geoffrey interrupted, “Look, I know what you want, and I’ll tell you everything, but not right now. I don’t know what Mr. Reynolds did to me, but I feel like my head may explode if I try to think any more. I need to lie down and get some rest. After that, I’m sure I’ll feel better and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.” If Dr. Crangler intended to respond now, Geoffrey didn’t notice because he was already lying back down on his bed. The doctor reluctantly gathered the notebooks from the desk drawer and tucked them back under his arm, then he cleaned up the empty food and drink containers. Under normal circumstances, he would’ve had someone else do such menial work, but he wanted no one in this room interacting Mr. Summons until he could get every bit of information possible out of him. Afterward, he returned to the notebooks, but with the same futile results. After a few hours, he decided to get some rest himself. The only thing that helped him quell his internal anxiousness was that he knew that he needed to be fully alert if his subsequent interview with Mr. Summons was going to be a success, and he certainly needed for it to be a success. This was a once in a millennia—more than that, once in human history—opportunity. Until now, he could only study the physical properties of alien life forms, but before him loomed the possibility of studying the mind of far advanced intelligences. He felt as if he could burst.
Apparently, he was more tired than he realized, because when one of his assistants woke him to inform him that Geoffrey was awake and was calling for him, nearly six hours had passed. He rushed to Mr. Summons’s room, notebooks in tow. When he entered, he found Geoffrey sitting up on his bed. He looked refreshed but somehow aged, though just barely. Otherwise, he looked like his old self.
“Hello, Mr. Summons.” greeted Dr. Crangler amiably.
“Hello, Dr. Crangler.” answered Geoffrey, “I see you haven’t let those notebooks get far from you.”
The doctor peered down at the notebooks, “No, I haven’t it would seem…how are you feeling?”
“Much better, much better indeed. That food and rest really did wonders. Say, how long was I out before I woke up the first time? I vaguely remember blacking out back there with Mr. Reynolds, but after that, everything’s fuzzy.”
“Are you saying that you remember something after you fainted?” asked Dr. Crangler.
“Yeah. Must’ve been some kind of dream or something. Mr. Reynolds was there and I think he was trying to teach me something or something like that. I don’t remember much else. After then, I woke up and all I can remember was being very thirsty and very hungry.”
“Interesting.” The doctor mused aloud. He took a seat and placed the notebooks in his lap.
“So, how long had I been out? A few hours?” Geoffrey persisted.
“A few hours!” exclaimed the doctor. “You were unconscious for four days.”
“Four days?” apparently, it was Geoffrey’s turn to make an exclamation, “Are you sure? It didn’t seem like that long at all.”
“Of course I’m sure. I monitored you personally every day…” the doctor would’ve continued, but he refrained. Not only did he not want Geoffrey to know how frantic he had become concerning these latest developments, but protocol required that he not draw any attention to the fact that his patients were being monitored every second of the day, at least not in their presence anyway. It wasn’t like anyone expected that they didn’t know, the powers that be just thought it best that they not dwell on that fact too often, and with difficult, temper tantrum throwing patients like Delilah, no one questioned the logic. “Yes, Son, you were unconscious for four days.” The doctor finished simply.
“Wow!” was the only response Geoffrey could muster.
The doctor gave Geoffrey a moment to calibrate himself before resuming, “Do you remember anything of what Mr. Reynolds was saying in this dream you mentioned?”
“Not really. That’s how my dreams always are. When I wake up, I usually can’t remember much about them.”
The doctor opened one of the notebooks in his lap and presented it to Geoffrey, “These are the symbols you wrote when you were in the room with Mr. Reynolds, just before you lost consciousness. Do you have any idea what they represent?” The doctor’s voice was tense. Geoffrey looked down into the open leaves of the notebook. At first there wasn’t a sign of recognition on his face as if he was reading something somebody else had written. Then, the next moment, his eyes lit up with recollection.
“I’m sorry Dr.” he began. The doctor began to pull the notebook back, when Geoffrey snatched it from his hands. He looked at it more closely. “Yes! Yes, I do know what these symbols mean!” The violence of Geoffrey’s sudden movement caused the doctor to leap on his bed, startled. “This is what Mr. Reynolds was teaching me. I remember it now. He was teaching me how to read these symbols. When I was with him in the room, he told me to write something down, then he showed me all these symbols, and when I was asleep, he taught me how to read them.”
“He told you to write?” asked Dr. Crangler, “In your head?”
“Yeah, don’t ask me what that was about, ‘cuz I couldn’t describe it to you if I tried, but he spoke to me in my mind. He made me hear and see things that were more clear than what I’m hearing and seeing right now.”
“So you can translate this?” Dr. Crangler was nearly overwhelmed himself.
“Sure, if you get me some more notebooks, I can write it all down right now.”
Dr. Crangler snapped his fingers impatiently toward a corner of the room. As soon as the notebooks and pens were produced, the doctor shoved as many into Geoffrey’s hands as he could hold. Geoffrey began scribbling in them as furiously as he had done back in the late Mr. Reynolds’s room, but now that he was not being infused by whatever physic energy Mr. Reynolds had been emitting, he found that he needed to rest after filling the first two notebook
s to capacity. Dr. Crangler wanted desperately to press him on, to have him finish the entire translation as soon as humanely possible, but common sense warned him that if he pressed too hard, he may foul up this whole endeavor, and that was a risk he simply could not afford. He advised Geoffrey (albeit unwillingly), to take as many rest breaks as he deemed necessary, but to finish recording what he knew as quickly as possible.
“You can’t imagine just how important this information may be.” Dr. Crangler asserted solemnly as he disappeared out of the room.
“You may be surprised.” Geoffrey whispered after the doctor was gone. He lay down to rest, but did not sleep. Instead, he just lay there with his eyes shut tightly. Behind his closed lids, he saw a panorama of alien symbols as well as the ideas they signified, in human language. After about thirty minutes, he would get up, grab a notebook, and complete the next round of translations. This went on for hours and hours—with Dr. Crangler carefully watching the entire time—until all the notebooks were filled. After Geoffrey finished the last page of the last notebook, he lay back down again, but this time, he did sleep. He slept long and hard, as he had before, and no wonder; he had just written untold thousands of words freehand, of things no human mind would’ve been able to conceive otherwise. Meanwhile, Dr. Crangler quickly retrieved the notebooks as soon as it was clear that Geoffrey had finished with them. After replacing them with fresh ones (just in case Mr. Summons had more to write), he made a swift beeline for his office, but not before informing every member of his staff that under no circumstances was he to be bothered until he stipulated otherwise.
The Virus Page 11