"Do you? You know what the Mi-go form is now. Horatio, you could not fit in one of our suspended-animation chambers. And outside the protective fluid, your body would be pulped before we left your solar system."
I stood up, shoving my hand through my hair and pulling off my glasses. "Dammit! Sarah, why are you torturing me like this? Taunting me with love then dashing it away. Waving scientific exploration which I cannot resist, then dashing that too away. What are you trying to do to me?" I was shouting but pulled my emotional outburst back to a hoarse whisper. "Why did you say the Mi-go would accept me 'after a fashion?' And come to think of it, you didn't tell me what your mission was here on Earth."
"Horatio, we come back to Earth to collect humans. We've been fighting the creatures and forces which you call the Elder Gods in different places in this galaxy for long before there were humans. We seeded likely planets with the fundamental building blocks of life, life designed as a kind of organic computational system. The investigations of your people into the mystic, magic, and elder things are the information we seek to help us defeat these powers who want to wipe out all other lifeforms."
Sarah reached over and picked up her valise case, setting it on the work table. "I ask for your scientific mind to think before you act on what I'm about to show you. What you are about to see is extreme. But understand the ability to think is not diminished, and once we get back to my planet, these cases will interface with equipment which will allow continued scientific exploration by their, uh, occupants."
She opened the case and inside there were three metal tubes, each about eight inches in diameter. She took two out and set them on the table, rotating them so I could see there was a clear window in each. And behind the glass, floating in a bubbling green liquid, was a human brain. At first my stomach wanted to revolt, but then my brain took control and I leaned closer.
"Fascinating!" I said. "They're alive? So to speak?"
"Yes. I am a highly skilled human-surgeon. I can remove the brain and hook it up to the feedback electronics and pseudo-nerves within the brain case. These brains are 'asleep' and will remain in a dream state until we reach my home planet. The fluid within is the same stasis-fluid that cushions the Mi-go. Each brain-case has connections for communication, even sight." She lifted the third tube from the case. It was filled with liquid, but otherwise empty. "Using the knowledge and science that crafted me, I can design a similar system once we arrive back at my home planet. You would be functionally just like me, able to take on a form you desire. Once we have traveled through space, we can again be in our human forms. Just like we are now, Horatio."
"But my brain… in a jar?"
"When you want to go out and learn from the Mi-go, you will be able to become one of us in the same way and just as fully as I am now human. The Mi-go would see you as Mi-go, touch you as Mi-go and communicate with you as Mi-go."
"But why can't you stay here? With me, in your human form?"
"Because of the argon in your atmosphere. There's too much for Mi-go and we are slowly poisoned while we're here unless we wear an argon-scrub mask. The filters in an A-scrub only last a couple weeks. They're small and we bring plenty of extras. But we are usually only here for a couple weeks at a time. I ran out of the filters I'd brought in my drop-pod after six months. Now I'm dying in the poison atmosphere. There was no way I could free my ship by myself, and it's a miracle this team from M.U. has worked so fast."
"How long before you have to leave?"
"I'm leaving tonight. With the winter coming, I fear there will be lots of preparation to my ship for transport back to M.U. next spring. There is no telling if there will be any more nights when it is just left here like this and I cannot survive more than another few weeks before I succumb to argon poisoning."
“Good thing you’re not Jason.”
“What?”
“And the Argonauts?” I realized my comment was just a sympton of my nervousness and shrugged. “Never mind. Alright, Sarah. Let’s do this before I think too long about what I’m saying.”
***
I watched as Sarah opened the ship with her touch, I even heard and saw the command which activated the systems on board. I barely even noticed that I wasn't using actual eyes anymore, the optical and neural sensors she installed for me were that good. She carried her two former crew mates out though the entry hatch. She indicated they were very light as they had completely desiccated in the year and a half since the crash. There was no rot, but then I didn't quite understand their physiology yet. The Mi-go seemed most similar to a type of myconid, a fungus or mushroom, but such comparisons aren't particularly applicable.
Once she restored the ship’s systems, Sarah showed me how to access the extensive database which was electrically based. Sarah assured me it was only a fraction of what would be available once we arrived at her home planet, but even so, there was more information on human proto-language and early written communications systems than I'd discovered in twenty years of research.
***
It turns out the suspended animation is not exactly like sleep because all my normal thoughts and coherent concepts are available to me but everything happens much more slowly. A fleeting thought might take hours or days to pass while within the stasis-fluid system.
Most of all, I miss Sarah. I know she's here because I can see her biologic-systems information being updated in the database, but we cannot communicate until we are revived closer to planetfall.
I wonder how many years might have passed since we left Earth. What I really want to do is roll over and pull the blankets up but there are no blankets, just green viscous fluid inside this brain case. Sighing my clichéd sigh, I return to my dream-world while I wait for the revival process to start sometime in the future when Sarah and I can be together again.
***
...there is a window, it is tall with wrought iron framing the glass panes. Outside the winter winds blow. Winter is a time of conflicting emotions for me...
TOMES AND RITUALS 101
Your Special Advocate
Chad Eagleton
When St. Mary’s Hospital in Arkham called his cell phone, Ezra Gaskell was down in Kingsport. He’d dropped his kids off maybe twenty minutes before and barely made it a few blocks from his ex-wife’s house on Central Hill before he had to pull over into Silva’s Gas Station and weep.
It had been over a year since his divorce. That hurt was over and he saw the relationship clearly now, knew it would have never worked. Not seeing his children every day is what bothered him. Not because he was one of those people who thought his life had been incomplete until he had children but rather because he never ever wanted to be his father.
Most of the time, Ezra managed okay, but work had been taking its toll. Both on him and his visitation. Student Affairs at Miskatonic University handled all the non-academic issues that came with being a student: leadership, involvement, health, safety, and conduct. For faculty, the close of the semester meant winding down and planning summer activities. For Ezra and the others in his division it meant things got a lot busier, even before the special circumstances that always came up at MU. Year-end bustle meant he’d had to cancel some weekends. His ex was understanding but rescheduling didn’t always work. Sometimes, like tonight, if he wanted to see his children, he had to make the drive, spend the day with them, and then take them back home.
“This is Gaskell,” he said, managing to answer the call seconds before it went to his voicemail.
“It’s Rebecca.” He recognized the voice immediately. Rebecca Makepeace was the forensic nurse on staff at St. Mary’s, which meant—“There’s been an assault.”
“One sec.” Ezra minimized the call, clicked the Note icon and opened a fresh document. When he thumbed back to the call, he switched to the speaker. “Go ahead,” he said, now ready to type as the nurse spoke.
“The girl’s name is Virginia Tarbox. She’s a twenty-year-old junior in the new Media School. Sgt. Michaels brought her in
.”
Ezra glanced at the time display on his phone. It wasn’t anywhere close to midnight so any party she attended must have been raucous for something like this to happen so early. There was also the matter of the date, April 30th, but he’d rather not think about that. Mundane evil was bad enough.
“Was she impaired?” he asked.
“That’s why Officer Michaels brought her. He’s still here and waiting. It’ll be a bit before the tests come back.”
“Did she report the assault to you or him?”
“To me. After she got here.”
“Does she remember anything?”
“Vague. Nothing worthwhile. No names, no faces, not even a location really.”
“Other physical trauma?”
“I haven’t done the forensic exam yet. Waiting for you. There’s faint but visible bruising on both her wrists and ankles, however.”
Ezra ran his hand across his face. He looked from the parking lot out toward the shore and the reef and the fogbank already rolling steadily up the craggy coast. Through the shifting gloom, the moonlight turned shadowy and deepened into strange shades of blue.
Christ, I hate Kingsport, he thought. “She’s there alone?”
“She is.”
The car felt stuffy. He cracked the windows. The breeze carried in the sound of the ocean and the other night noises from along the water’s shoreline and much further out. The lapping water and the call of the night birds made him sleepy.
He rubbed his eyes, then caught a glimpse of the Silvas’ youngest boy staring out through the window at him. Ezra waved. The boy blinked and continued staring but didn’t wave back. He didn’t blame him. The Silvas had never fared well in Kingsport. The Miskatonic Valley people tended to not be friendly if you didn’t look like them.
Returning to the conversation, Ezra said, “Didn’t want her parents called?”
“No.”
Ezra looked through the crowded, archaic skyline, north toward Arkham where the fog and the gloom and the scintillating shades of blue and the clusters of shadows along the line of roofs broke. “I’m in Kingsport,” he said. “I’ll be there soon as I can. Can you put Michaels on the line?”
“Hold on.”
This wasn’t the first call he had ever taken about an assault, but something about this one—maybe it was the timing or maybe it was being in Kingsport—felt heavy, like it was pulling him down below the surface of a calm and still body of water to reveal all the things lurking below the waterline.
What the hell is wrong with the Miskatonic Valley? he wondered just as Michael’s heavily accented voice came on the line. “Tell me what happened, Sergeant.”
“I was patrolling campus, when I spotted the girl, Ms. Tarbox. This was approximately 30 minutes ago on Garrison Street. Looked like she had wandered off campus in a daze. She appeared visibly intoxicated; poor mobility, stumbling around. Once I stopped her, she was clearly on something. Poor response. Poor tracking. Big pupils. It was also obvious something had happened to her. Hair and clothes were a mess. She was barefoot and had no ID.”
Ezra typed fast with his thumbs, leaving cleanup to autocorrect and a later edit at the hospital. “Anything else?”
Michaels paused. “She mentioned a party. Based on where I picked her up—”
Here it comes, he thought. “Zeta Omega Rho house?”
“Yeah,” Michaels said, unsurprised by Gaskell’s successful guess. The two of them had worked together before, most recently when the Shipka boy disappeared from campus. Michaels’ assistance, while unknowing, had been invaluable to the Dunwich Committee on Student Safety retrieving the boy from the Dreamlands.
“She in Delta Alpha Kappa?”
“She was wearing a sweatshirt with those Greek letters when I picked her up. I ran her student records to be certain while I was waiting for you.”
Ezra copied her student ID number. “She’s not twenty-one,” he said. “Anyone been to the frat house?”
“Incident is enough to make their night hell, but we haven’t yet. I did call one of the other cars. They rolled by. Party is still going on. Wanted to wait for you. No one has officially told me anything but I had a feeling. I wanted to see whether she wanted to report or not. Did not want to muck that up for some underage drinking tickets.”
“I’m on my way.”
Gaskell hung up and tossed the smartphone on the seat beside him. He started the car and pulled out onto Water Street. He followed the winding road around the village, driving through shifting banks of fog, past the docks and the fishing boats, and then, once near Hog Island’s lighthouse, onto the highway. When he left Kingsport and the fog behind, both the night and his head cleared. On the drive up to Arkham, he tried to decide if that was a good thing or not.
***
The tall blond security guard at the gate radioed his arrival before letting Gaskell through to the employee lot. When Ezra pulled into an empty spot, he saw Nurse Makepeace waiting at the door. Rebecca was a short compact woman with brown hair she always wore in a ponytail. She would have been attractive if she didn’t always look so utterly and completely exhausted. She held the door open for him when he got close.
“Someday we’ll see each other under better circumstances,” he offered.
“I hope not,” she said. “Every time I see you, I hope it’s my last time.”
“Understood.”
Rebecca led him to Virginia’s room. En route, she filled him in on a few more details she thought he might need, then, inside the room, she introduced them to each other. “Just push the button if you need something,” she reminded the girl before she left.
No one looks good lying on a hospital bed but it was obvious Virginia Tarbox had been through hell. Her hair was stringy and sweaty, matted to her narrow face. Her small lips looked cracked and bruised. The dark circles around her big eyes made them look far too large for her face.
“Virginia, my name is Ezra Gaskell. I work for the Dean of Students at Miskatonic University and, like Nurse Makepeace said, I’m your Special Advocate.”
The girl blinked at him. Ezra stood awkwardly for a moment, then carried the chair and set it beside her bed. Close to her now, he noticed a troubling burnt aroma and patches of her skin looked raw and irritated.
Black Hellebore, he thought. Grandmother always called it Christmas Rose. But she hadn’t understood any of the plant’s other uses like grandfather.
Ezra hoped his supernatural concerns didn’t show on his face. “Here’s my card,” he said, handing it to her. “As you can see, it has my name. My campus address—my office is in the basement of the Administrative Building. Do you know where that is? The big old building right across from the bell tower. Then there’s my phone number and my fax line, though I don’t even know why I have a fax line, it’s so out of date.”
When Virginia looked at the card and nodded, he gently took it out of her hand and flipped it over before returning it. He noted the skin on her hands was definitely irritated and the smell was certainly black hellebore. He continued, explaining, “Here on the back is my cell phone number, okay? So you can call me at either of those numbers, office or cell, any time you want. If you call the campus number though and I don’t answer, leave a message. If I’m out of the office, the voicemail routes to this phone. And that little squiggle there in the corner where you have your thumb is completely unimportant. It’s just a little printer’s mark.”
“What’s a Special Advocate?”
He met her eyes. He noticed a faint sheen on her forehead too, as if it had been marked with something that was now only visible in the light at a certain angle. “You’ve been through something terrible. I’m here to help you through this process in every way I can,” he said. “To make sure you understand what options you have.”
“Thank you.”
“First, is there someone you want me to call?”
“My phone.” She touched her face. “I don’t know what happened to it.”
Ezra shrugged. “That’s okay,” he said. “We’ll find your phone.”
She shook her head, squeezed her eyes closed hard. “I don’t remember anyone’s number.”
Ezra touched her arm light enough to hopefully break her train of thought and keep her from getting pulled into the abyss of her own anger and grief. “I’m the same way,” he said. “Since I got my iPhone, I don’t even remember my own number. But don’t worry about it. If there’s someone you want me to call, I’ll get their number and I’ll call them.”
“Megan Sturbridge.”
Ezra asked her to spell the last name while he added it to his contacts. “Was Megan at the party with you?” he asked, while setting a quick reminder to call her in 15 minutes.
Virginia nodded and absentmindedly touched her dry lips. Ezra grabbed her a cup of ice chips. She muttered her thanks, then said awkwardly as she crunched, “She’s my best friend and a sorority sister.”
“Then she’ll be easy to locate. Were you friends from before college or did you meet her through the sorority?”
“We met freshman year, then we became sorority sisters. It was her idea.”
“It’s good to have friends like that,” he said. “Are you both from around here?”
“Innsmouth.”
Ezra nodded, unsurprised. Once she admitted it, he recognized her accent. The regional variations weren’t as easy to pick out with anyone under a certain age but when it came to the physicality, you couldn’t live long in the Miskatonic Valley without being able to spot an Innsmouther from a mile away. Virginia definitely had the look.
“I’m from Dunwich but my ex-wife, she’s from Innsmouth,” he explained. “Now she lives down in Kingsport where she teaches English at the Hall School. That’s a fancy private all-girls thing, if you’ve never heard of it. The woman just can’t seem to get away from the sea.”
Miskatonic Dreams Page 6