PSI/Net

by Rob MacGregor

  "What's your point, Doc?"

  She leaned forward. Her hand shook as she raised it. "We were psychic spies, remote viewers, who could see what was happening on the other side of the world, but you know what? We couldn't see what was right under our noses."

  "I believe it. But so what? That's over."

  "Do you remember when we found out that the Fort Meade group was getting the same targets we were?"

  "Yeah, we thought it was a lot of useless duplication, as I recall, and it was. But that's the military."

  "It was more than that."

  "Okay. So what's the story? I know you didn't drive all the way here from Ouray for a late-night chat about old times."

  "About three months ago, our old buddy, Eduardo Perez, showed up at my door."

  "Ah, Eduardo, the lotto king. What's he doing with his millions, building bunkers?"

  Perez had been the only remote viewer who had won a lottery. He had attempted to see the winning numbers week after week, but always missed, rarely hitting more than one or two. Then one night, as the story went, instead of numbers, he glimpsed a name: Yaro Lu. He didn't know who it was or what it meant. But he changed the letters to numbers, according to their placement in the alphabet, and played them. Yaro Lu hit a jackpot worth eight million dollars.

  "Not a bad guess. I'll get to that. After the project ended, he tried to find out more about Eagle's Nest. So he invoked the Freedom of Information Act and got his hands on a document that referred to the Fort Meade remote viewers as a control group."

  "Perez was a conspiracy nut. He was always talking about enemy remote viewers attacking us. I remember he was convinced that the Chinese were using remote viewers to psychically force cooks to poison the take-out Chinese food that we ordered on those days we targeted Chinese installations."

  Doc seemed in no mood to make light of Perez's past. "Do you want to hear what he found out?"

  "Okay, I'm game. So if they were a control group, what were we?"

  "The experiment."

  Calloway frowned. "What experiment?"

  "Do you remember that civilian technician, Jenkins, who always took our blood pressure at the beginning of each session?"

  "Yeah, the skinny kid with the glasses that always slipped down his nose. We used to make fun of him because he wore surgical gloves, like he was worried that we might be contagious."

  "That's it!" She grabbed his hand and squeezed. "Those gloves were key!"

  He took back his hand. "The key to what?"

  "One day I noticed that he painted something on the inside of the blood pressure belt. He usually did it in his tech room before he came into the viewing room. But on that particular day he forgot and did it in front of me. When I asked him what it was, he seemed sort of evasive, at first. Then he called it a transmitting gel that helped give a better reading."

  Calloway clearly recalled that the inside of his forearm was often damp when the belt was removed.

  "I'd forgotten all about it until after Eduardo showed up and told me about that document," Doc continued. "I think we were being subjected to a drug that was absorbed through our skin from the inside of the blood pressure belt. I tried tracking down Jenkins to verify it, but there is no record of a James Jenkins ever working at the base in Colorado Springs."

  "And the other group didn't get the drug."

  "That's my guess. They were the control group."

  Calloway stared out the window into the darkness. "So what does it mean? Did it make us any better psychic spies?"

  "Maybe. But that's a moot point. The important matter is the side effects."

  "What side effects?"

  "They seem to vary. Mine relate to crowds. That's why I moved to Ouray." She hesitated, bit her lower lip as if she wasn't sure she wanted to continue. "I hate small towns. I'm a city girl. I grew up in Chicago. But now if I go into a city or around a lot of people, I just lose it. It starts with a dull headache that gets worse, then I start shaking and gasping for breath. Sometimes, it even happens when I'm in a room with more than a couple of people."

  "How do you handle the bookstore?"

  "I only work mornings when it's slow. I stock the shelves and put in orders. If some customers show up, I close my eyes for a few seconds and imagine that I'm all alone at the top of a mountain. That usually works for a while. Then I have to call Maria, my niece, to take over the shop."

  She shook her head, tears came to her eyes. "I've been incapacitated, Trent. I hate it. I came here at night so I could avoid running into a bunch of campers. It's that bad. When Maria left town for a week, we closed the store and I had groceries delivered to the house."

  "And you think that's from the drug?"

  "It actually started while we were still working together. You remember how I made up excuses to avoid meetings. I'd monitor you in the viewing room and do paperwork. I managed to hide it pretty well, but even then it was on my mind all the time."

  "I didn't know. I'm sorry."

  "I'm not the only one." She sipped her water. "With Johnstone, it's driving. He goes into a trance and forgets what he's doing. He also thinks that the government is beaming him with some sort of invisible rays. Timmons developed an obsessive fear of germs. He washes his hands all the time, changes his clothes five, six times a day, and won't touch anyone."

  "I wouldn't want to get stuck in an elevator with those two," Calloway said.

  "Henderson is into animals in a big way."

  "He was always talking about his dogs."

  "I know, but now he's got fifteen or twenty of them, at least a couple of dozen cats, and a horse with its own bedroom in his house," Doc explained. "He likes animals better than people and spends most of his time dealing with his menagerie."

  "What's the horse doing in the bedroom?"

  She smiled. "Glad you asked. He says that he and the horse are in telepathic communication, and the horse requested an in-house stable."

  "I wouldn't be surprised if he thought the horse came from Arcturus," Calloway said. "Henderson always wanted to do UFO targets."

  She nodded. "I remember that. You asked about Perez. He's a rich survivalist type. He lives in an underground mansion he built near Crested Butte Mountain with a five-year supply of food. He told me he's concerned that an asteroid is going to hit the Earth and that it'll cause the poles to shift."

  "He can support his paranoia in style now. What about Steve Ritter?"

  "Remember how he always talked about trains?"

  "Right, especially steam engines that ran on narrow gauge rails." Calloway also remembered him as being competitive and antagonistic.

  "He lives in a room in a nineteenth-century hotel in Durango, Colorado, and once or twice a week rides the old train to Silverton and back. He rarely leaves the hotel except for his train ride."

  Calloway thought about his own nomadic life, drifting from one campsite to the next with no long-range plans and his obsessing about the past, about Camila and Bobby Aimes. He leaned back in his chair.

  "I guess I do feel handicapped from what we went through. But I don't know if it relates to any drug. Maybe it was the remote viewing itself." Things had gotten strange during the last winter in Colorado Springs. Doc had left and told him he should do the same. But he'd stayed on another three months. With the support for the project collapsing, Maxwell had been desperate for results. He'd pushed Calloway beyond the limits of anything they'd done, and Calloway had never gotten over it.

  "I thought about that, too. So I checked on the control group," Doc said. "There are a couple of eccentrics among them, but none of them are exhibiting the mentally dysfunctional behavior of our gang. Several of them have turned their experience into profitable businesses. They teach and do contract work."

  "Gordon Maxwell, too?"

  She nodded. "He calls himself a futurist now. He gets contracts with corporations and uses remote viewing to pick up on trends. At least, that's the cover story. Eduardo thinks he's involved in corporate spying and
who knows what else."

  "You mean Maxwell is doing it himself now?"

  "Not exactly. He's got the old gang involved, all but you, me, and Eduardo."

  "So they can still do it?"

  Doc shrugged. "They're obsessive, paranoid, and antisocial, but that apparently doesn't stop them from hitting targets."

  "I'm surprised that Maxwell hasn't come after you."

  She folded her hands on the table. "He called about a month after Eduardo stopped by. He wanted to know if I'd like to start doing some targets again. I wouldn't even have to leave home."

  "That sonofabitch better not approach me. I hope you're not going back to work for him."

  "The money is good, Trent, and he would like you to get involved, too."

  Calloway pushed away from the table, stood up. He suddenly realized that Doc had come here to lure him back. "Are you crazy? What about that drug?"

  "It could be interesting."

  "Interesting? No! You don't understand everything that went on between me and Maxwell." He pointed to the door. "Go back to your little mountain town, Doc. I don't want anything to do with it. Or you, for that matter."

  "Trent, sit down," she bellowed. "You've got it all wrong, you stupid sonofabitch. I despised Maxwell when you were still defending him."

  He took a breath, slowly exhaled, calming himself down. He sat back down. "So what is it?"

  "Look, he didn't give up easy. So I played along with him. He even gave me Ritter's phone number and told me to talk to him if I wanted another perspective. That was how I found out about the others. Ritter, in his usual arrogant way, told me about their quirks as if to say that if they were doing it, so could I."

  Calloway leaned back in his chair. "Okay. So what's your plan?" She smiled. "I think we should infiltrate the bastards. See what they're up to, then go public, expose Maxwell for what he is. There's a lot of money involved. That makes me think there's something crooked going on."

  Calloway already knew what his answer would be. "Sorry, Doc. I'm not going back and I'm not really interested in finding out what Maxwell is doing with his boys."

  "Trent, we might be getting dragged back into it, whether we like it or not. I've been hearing shit in my head. Voices. I catch words, phrases. At first, I thought I was going nuts. None of it made sense. Then I realized it was them. I'm picking up on the other remote viewers while they're working. It's like I'm overhearing pieces of their conversations."

  "How do you know that's what it is?"

  "I don't, not for certain. That's why I wanted to talk to you. Have you had anything like this happen to you?"

  Calloway is working again.

  "No. Nothing like that."

  She watched him closely. "What aren't you telling me? C’mon, out with it."

  "For chrissake, Doc." He knew he couldn't fool her, not for long. He told her about his day—the Indians, the lightning, the numbers. "I tried the numbers. All I got was a brief glimpse of pillars. But then as I came out of it, I heard a voice, as if someone was talking about me."

  He told her what he'd heard.

  She frowned, shook her head. "It was them, Trent. You've got to go for that target again," she said, emphatically. "Let's do it now. I'll monitor you."

  "No way. I'm not getting involved. Besides, I'm tired. It's late." "Hey, I drove all the way here from Ouray today. Five hours. I'm tired too, but we need to do this now."

  Calloway ran a hand through his short, natty hair. "No we don't. Look, Doc. I've got tomorrow off. I'll take you out on the river."

  "Like hell you will. Listen to me, you sonofabitch. This morning I was working in my garden. I looked up and there you were standing by a stone wall with hundreds of petroglyphs on it."

  He nodded, surprised by both her vehemence and her accuracy. "You're right. I was there. That was where I saw the Indians."

  "But you spoke to me. I heard your voice in my head."

  "What did I say?"

  "You said that we had work to do, that we had to stop the bastards before it was too late."

  "I said that?"

  "I interpreted that to mean we should infiltrate Maxwell's gang."

  "Let's talk about it tomorrow. You can sleep on my cot. I'll take the hammock."

  "Damn it, Trent." She raised her voice again. "You need to hit that target. Those numbers didn't appear for no reason and some part of you did reach out to me."

  He scowled. He'd almost gotten hit by lightning, he'd fallen into the river, and now he was getting berated by a fat lady who wanted him to remote view in the middle of the night and maybe even go work for his old boss—a man he never wanted to see again.

  "I'll tell you what, Doc. I'll shoot for that target. We'll see what I get. But I'm not going to go to work for Maxwell, even if it is to expose him." He waved a hand in front of him. "That's the end of it."

  Doc looked disappointed. Tough, he thought.

  He sat on the cot, a couple of pillows propped up behind him. He began breathing deeply and slowly. Doc handed him a notepad from her purse. "Write down the numbers you got," she said quietly. "I'll feed them back to you once you're down."

  The numbers came easily to mind. He jotted them on the pad and handed it back to her. He drifted down into his zone and this time he pictured a dark hole to one side. He tossed all of his concerns into it, including his worries that he wouldn't succeed and his regrets about the past. To top it off, he tossed a metaphorical six-pack of beer into the hole and sealed it shut. Then he redirected his attention to Doc as she slowly read the numbers aloud.

  He cleared his mind and focused. After a couple of minutes, Doc repeated the numbers and told him to take his time. He'd always been known as the quickest one to pick up images, but now he wasn't getting anything. He tried again. This time he pictured the numbers hovering in front of him, as he'd seen them by the river.

  The image of the pillars reappeared. They took on dimension and he realized that they were in front of another structure. "I see a building with pillars. But something's wrong here."

  "Is the building occupied?"

  He didn't feel good about the place. He moved away until he gained a better perspective. The pillars tilted precariously, little remained of the building.

  "It's in ruin. Devastated."

  "Okay. Move further away, get an overview."

  "I don't see anything recognizable. It's rubble, pieces of buildings in every direction."

  "How old are the buildings?"

  "I can't tell," he said slowly. "There's no reference here."

  "I want you to go deeper now, Trent. Down to stage two. You can do it."

  He took several slow deep breaths, feeling himself sinking further and further down, but maintaining his view of the site. When Doc spoke again, he felt as if he were actually among the ruined buildings. At the same time, he remained aware of himself sitting in the trailer.

  "Okay, Trent, now tell me exactly where you are. Let's start with the big picture. What continent are you on?"

  "North America." He answered without hesitating, even though he wasn't sure how he knew.

  "Where in North America?"

  This time he took longer. "I think it's Washington, D.C."

  "Are you sure?"

  "I see something in front of me now.. . more broken pillars and a figure, a statue. I think it's Abraham Lincoln from the shoulders up."

  "You mean a part of the Lincoln Memorial?"

  "Yes."

  "Is it the same building you saw before?"

  "No. That was the White House. What's left of it." At one level, he responded quietly to her questions as if he were simply a knowledgeable observer. But on another level, he felt numbed with shock by the realization.

  "Is this a future event?" Doc asked.

  "I don't understand. I'm here now. I see smoke or clouds. I can't tell. The sky is odd. Very low. It's green, yellow, red. It's windy. A swirling wind."

  "Trent, do you want to come back now?"

  "No, n
ot yet."

  "Okay, let's go down to the third level. Take your time. Sink into it, to that place where you will have greater knowledge than what you can see or even what you can sense."

  He imagined lead weights attached to his legs as he sank deeper and deeper. He remained bi-located, but also aware of another layer, an abstract place of knowledge, an invisible library. He couldn't tell how much time had passed when he finally heard Doc's voice.

  "Move your finger up and down if you're ready," she told him.

  "Good. Now, tell me what time frame you're viewing."

  "Near future. Very close."

  "How close? Be specific."

  "Days. Not many. Four or five more days."

  "What happened to the capital?" she asked.

  "A nuclear bomb exploded."

  "How did it get through our defenses?"

  "Oh, it was already here. Carried into the city in a backpack. Powerful, but small."

  "Can you move back to the time when the bomb arrived in the city?"

  "I can't move back there, but I can see things related to the explosion." He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. "A kid is carrying the bomb to Washington. He's eighteen or nineteen. He only has a vague idea of what he's doing. It's a complicated matter."

  "Are there others involved?"

  "The kid is a courier for somebody else."

  "Who?"

  He felt as if someone were watching him, the same way he'd felt earlier, before Doc arrived. He pushed away the thought, concentrated. But it was no use. "I can't tell. But it might be a group of people involved."

  Stick to your rafts, Calloway. It's safer. Much safer.

  "I know you're tired, Trent," Doc said. "But this is important. Can you get a name of the kid?"

  "Name. I don't know. Wait. Okay. Matthew."

  "Can you get a last name?"

  Watch it, Calloway! The voice sounded darker this time, threatening.

  He reached toward the fuzzy image of the kid named Matthew, searching for a last name, but the annoying voice rattled inside his head. He came up blank. He shook his head. "I'm losing it."

  "All right, Trent, I want you to come back now. Take your time."

  Calloway withdrew from the target and settled completely into himself again. The other presence vanished. Doc's skin and hair seemed to glow in the lamplight. Everything in the trailer seemed to vibrate. He'd experienced such phenomena other times after returning from third-level sessions.