Tesseracts Seventeen

by Colleen Anderson

  I woke up feeling unsatisfied and somehow dirty, as if I caught my parents in bed together. I had to talk to someone— the CO had briefed me on what to expect but he had never told me about the sex part.

  Tony D’Angelo was the only one I would have felt comfortable talking to. We had spent many a rec-period together, working our way through pints of tequila and talking, about women, about politics, about our pasts. We were like brothers, Tony and I, and we saved each others lives on several occasions out in the mining belt. He was reckless, abandoned and the best miner in the fleet. He was also the happiest man I knew and he had an endless supply of risqué stories. He would have understood, but I couldn’t find him— he wasn’t in his room, he wasn’t at his post and he wasn’t in the rest room where I went in search of coffee.

  Marion was though. She collared me as I stood by the dispenser.

  “Come on then Mike. Tell all. What deep secrets was El Capitano harbouring? Any juicy, salacious bits I can use?”

  Marion was the shipboard equivalent of a reporter. Senior archivist, it was her job to record the details and minutiae of the trip for posterity. She was well known for prying into all the darkest recesses of our pasts, but she was open and friendly.

  I liked her.

  The Captain didn’t. I felt it, a curious doubling of my emotions, a steely contempt lingering under the surface. It must have showed in my eyes, for she shrank back away from me.

  “Hell, I was only trying to be friendly,” she said as she backed off and left the room.

  I logged in for work, feeling too confused to sit alone in my room. I though the discipline of work would help clear my mind. It didn’t. My head was full of something that wasn’t mine; ideas, memories, sounds and smells all came to me, new and yet old at the same time. After an hour I was ready to crawl up the walls. I went to see Doc McMaster.

  “It’s quite normal in these cases,” he said. “It was a very stupid thing for you to do— if I’d been asked I would have advised you against it.”

  I knew he was waiting for a question. He had this annoying habit of setting off conversations in order that you had to ask him to explain. He just loved explaining things. I didn’t mind too much. He was good at it. I humoured him.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “The human brain is a delicate instrument and we don’t yet completely know how it works.”

  “Yes, yes, I know that,” I said. “What I really need to know is how to stop the other thoughts taking over.”

  He looked at me and, for the first time in all my sessions with him, he wasn’t smiling.

  “I wish I knew, Mike, I really do.”

  He reached over to pat my shoulder and, impossibly, he had a laser scalpel in his hand. Headed towards my eye, close enough that I saw the light glint on the sharp edge of the blade. I felt it touch my eyeball, and stifled a scream.

  The Doc backed away, confused. He showed me his hands, both empty.

  Another memory.

  “You operated on the Captain’s eye,” I managed to say when I stopped trembling.

  “Yes,” he replied. “A routine lens change. I must have done it for half the crew on the ship on one trip or another.”

  He went on as I rose out of the chair. “You may as well let it happen Mike. Your brain is in turmoil at the moment. After all, it’s trying to take in four years of information all at once.”

  I stopped him from going on. “Why only four?”

  He smiled. Yet again he had more information than me. “Because that’s the length of time he had that biote. I remember him getting it after his old one was removed.”

  The doubling was coming faster— I was getting flashes that seemed to me like my own memories, no longer feeling alien. But I wasn’t feeling any more secure.

  I made my way back to the rest room.

  Marion was there again, in the corner, avoiding my gaze. At first she was wary of me, probably worrying that I’d snap at her again. It didn’t last though— it never did with Marion. Just two minutes later she was back to her usual prying self.

  “You must be the most envied man on board. The Captain wasn’t exactly known for his celibacy and it’s known he was very experienced.” She dropped me a long, slow wink. “If you know what I mean.”

  That was the trouble. I did know what she meant— I could see it, in full Technicolor, better than any holovid . The strange thing was, it was always the same black-haired woman, the one who had earlier haunted my dreams, I must have reddened— whatever it was it caused Marion to laugh.

  “You got a bit more than you bargained for didn’t you?”

  And then it happened again. The doubling. I looked at her face, saw it smile and change, into a grimace of pleasure. I cosaw her naked body, saw the small brown mole on her left breast. It was involuntary, but my lips curled in a smile that felt like a leer.

  The next thing I knew I got slapped in the face. I looked up, bemused as she left the table.

  “Congratulations,” a voice said to my left. “You got to her. What did you do— feel her up under the table?”

  I turned to face the CO as he sat down.

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that she was strictly a one-man woman?”

  He kept on talking but I tuned him out. I hadn’t thought about Marion’s sex life — not at all — it just wasn’t a topic that interested me. But I had seen her with the Captain’s eyes. That meant she wasn’t as faithful as the CO thought. Then again, who was?

  I let myself tune in again, aware as I did that the Captain hadn’t liked the CO very much. I wonder if he had really liked anyone. I was certainly getting a deeper insight than most people get of a man I had thought of as a friend.

  The CO was talking about the simulation of the last minutes of the Captain’s life. I leaned back in my chair as he switched on the holo. There he was, a six-inch mannequin floating above the table. I searched my memories for pictures, but none came. Either I hadn’t assimilated them yet, or the shock of death had driven them out. He floated, arms outstretched, legs apart, drifting, taking a breather. And then the spin started.

  He fell. For the first few feet it was all in slow-motion. But not for long. Accelerating, he headed for the wall and struck it hard. The room spun and he tumbled, smacking into the opposite wall. He got uffetted around the room until finally he hit the floor, a lifeless sack.

  It was then I really started to pay attention. At the base of the holo a figure appeared, tall, with only a black mask for a face. It bent down.

  The CO stopped the holo and turned up the magnification.

  “This is the most likely scenario. Watch.”

  The figure bent, fumbling at its neck. Then it swapped its biote with the Captain’s. The CO froze the picture while I sat there, stunned.

  Thinking I would be getting my friend’s memories, I had volunteered to help catch the murderer. I caught him all right— he was now a part of me.

  Several things fell into place— the hatred of the crew hadn’t gelled with my opinion of the Captain, and neither, now that I thought of it, did the dislike for coffee… hadn’t the Captain been the man who always extolled the virtues of Jamaican Blue mountain?

  I managed to find my voice. “How likely is this?” I asked. I already knew the answer.

  “Almost certain. Blood tests on the Captain show that he was introduced to the foreign biote after death. I’m sorry Mike.”

  He was sorry! My thoughts, my memories were being merged with those of a murderer— and he was sorry.

  My anger must have showed, for he sat back slightly in his chair as he spoke. “The main thing is, we still have a way of finding out who did it— possibly a better chance than we had before. Surely you’ve got some clues by now?”

  That was the thing— I had some clues, but they had still t
o connect up. There was the hatred of the crew, the dislike for coffee and the black-haired woman. And there was Marion.

  The doubling kicked in again and I felt joy, a hot rush of pleasure.

  I didn’t have the Captain’s memories— I had the murderer’s. The killer had slept with Marion, and she had seen in my eyes and my smile that I had got that memory. The question was, had she slept with the Captain as well — and if not — had she gone to confront the murderer?

  Had I killed her too?

  I left the CO sitting in his chair as I bolted for the door.

  I was too late.

  She lay, half in and half out of her door. The right side of her head had been beaten to a bloody red pulp. He had done it, but I still didn’t know why.

  The CO arrived just after me and started to check the computer log— maybe she’d contacted someone after leaving the rest room. Meanwhile I turned, and looked straight at a mirror.

  It all came together, as simply as that. One second my own sad eyes were staring back at me, confused and afraid. I blinked and the scene shifted as my mind doubled and my brain tried to make sense of its new information.

  I looked into the fierce glowering face of my friend Tony D’Angelo… only for a split second, until I blinked again and got myself back in my rightful place.

  I left the CO in Marion’s room and went in search of Tony. I knew where he would be… in the bubble.

  He was oblivious to me, his eyes shut and a dreamy expression on his face. I watched as he nudged the pressure up a notch. He gasped in pleasure as the biote gave him a new burst of the Captain’s memories.

  I finally understood.

  The black-haired woman had been Tony’s wife— I couldn’t recall the name yet but I was sure it would haunt me in years to come. She left Tony for the Captain— three years ago, just another of the Captain’s conquests.

  Since then, and up to the time of the murder, Tony had been sucking his own biote— giving it just small bursts of pressure, and forcing it to release its stored memories a little at a time, using it to reinforce his own faded dreams, hot dreams of the sexual ecstasy between himself and his wife.

  But time ran out. Eventually his original biote was near death and he needed to touch her, to remember the smoothness of her skin, to relieve the silky softness of her touch. But she was fading, dwindling. He needed memories — even the Captain’s would do — he could always pretend, couldn’t he?

  There was more, much more, about the pain of parting, about the way the Captain treated women after he had had enough of them, about Tony’s seduction of Marion — just to spite the Captain who had wanted her — all of that was in the background. All was secondary to the addiction, the hot sexual rush when the biote fed back the orgasm.

  His opened his eyes and saw me.

  I was too late to stop as he pushed the pressure up to its maximum, just before removing the respirator.

  By the time I had managed to turn off the field he was as good as dead. I suppose I could have saved him, but I stood there watching as he coughed up blood and gasped his way down to death. His breath bubbled red in his throat and I had to lean forward to catch his words.

  “I had to kill Marion. The Captain made me do it, you’ve got to see that— his memories, his hate, they were just too strong for me in the end. God, what a mess. He never liked her, not after she spurned him for me.”

  I looked down at him, wondering, sharing some of his emotions, feeling some of his pain, but I knew he was deluding himself. Hadn’t I felt his contempt for Marion? That memory came from before the Captain’s murder, before he infused the Captain into himself.

  I leaned closer as his speech grew fainter.

  “I should never have taken his biote. I should just have killed him. But I couldn’t give it up— not now. He stole my wife, you know?”

  I nodded. I did know, but I wondered why he was telling me, why he felt the need now, of all times.

  The blood around his mouth flowed faster as he continued.

  “She did things with him she never did with me. I had to have those thoughts.”

  He coughed and a rain of blood spattered the floor.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” he said.

  But I did, and I do.

  The biote fell to the floor as his eyes closed. I lifted it, feeling the weight. There was still some life in it. The doubling kicked in again and I felt joy, a hot rush of pleasure.

  I’m in the bubble, giving it a push, looking for her. She’s not mine, I know that.

  But I can pretend, can’t I?

  * * * * *

  William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now resident on the Bonavista Peninsula in Newfoundland, with fifteen novels published in the genre press and over 250 short story credits in thirteen countries. His work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and magazines. He lives on the shore with whales, bald eagles and icebergs for company and when he’s not writing he plays guitar, drinks beer and dreams of fortune and glory.

  Hermione and Me

  Dwain Campbell

  Baaaang!

  A gunshot would be kinder.

  Alarmed at the echoing crash, Mr. Moon casts his buttery eye in my bedroom window. It’s Daddy, Mr. Moon. Dad on his Friday night don’t-nag-the-crap-out-of-me tear. Slamming doors are a fact of life around here.

  It was the back door, a Home Depot maple slab with a porthole of stained glass depicting a yellow rose. That means Dad will Tom Sawyer through the gap in our tottering, peeling fence and, in uncertain darkness, brave Mount Carmel Cemetery. That’s the shortest escape route to the Duke of Duckworth pub.

  I’m super proud he’s not afraid of boneyard ghouls. I hate his scaredy-cat running away from Mom.

  Mom’s neither crying nor swearing. My bedroom is directly above the living room, and I can hear spiders weave webs down there. Nothing tonight.

  On my dresser, Yoda glows lime green. He looks wise, but offers no grammatically mauled wisdom. Bart Simpson, cartoon delinquent on a skateboard, sticks his tongue out, no more helpful than the Jedi. Dad wanted a boy, so I inherit his retro junk. My bottom drawer is jam-packed with his teenage comics stash.

  He thinks his other magazines are secret. The Penthouse pile. They are above ducts coming from the furnace. No one tells me, I just know these things.

  Grandma Noseworthy’s hall clock ticktocks heavily. It competes with an agitated murder of crows in the backyard maples, and throaty motorcycles on Logy Bay Road.

  An hour passes as speckled tattoos of moonlight inch across my gleaming hardwood floor. They resemble the skin art of Queequeg the harpooner. You’re surprised I can spell Queequeg? Weirded out that I’ve read Moby Dick? That’s OK, I’m only eight, so I get that a lot.

  “Meredith is a frigging genius, Dan. This school in Toronto, it’s a pretty penny, but…”

  “Penny? It’s a GD Hope Diamond times ten. Do you see any geese laying golden eggs in the bloody garden?”

  “Shut up! She’s bored silly in school. We have to see her properly educated.”

  “Maybe we could, if you’d stop Weight Watchers. Jessica Simpson is building a new patio on my paycheque.”

  “Maybe we could, if you’d stop drinking the disposable income…of bloody Ireland.”

  It goes deep six from there. Baaaang!

  Four kilometers from this bedroom, maybe five, the whales are dreaming, soothed by Mr. Moon’s tidal cradle. I wish I could sleepily drift away on a barnacled humpback, drift to…

  …Hogwarts. A wizard chamber would serve nicely, mucho merci.

  With that, I squirrel out of bed and crab-walk to the closet where I have a two-by-three foot Gryffindor study. I sit apple-sauce legs crossed on a ratty, chocolate brown duvet and have pretend tea with Hermione Granger, Philosopher Stone ve
rsion, who has brought strawberries and pears. Hermione pours fairy tea from a plastic Minnie Mouse teapot that was a key gift on birthday three. I wanted a microscope.

  Eleven-year-old Hermione is my favorite imaginary friend. Mom says Daddy has an imaginary friend too, a six-foot pink rabbit named Harvey.

  “Is Toronto much like London?” asks Hermione. Her chestnut hair is impossibly gold. Often my storybook friends don’t conjure true to form.

  “One has the CN Tower, the other just the Tower where heads roll.”

  Hermione nods knowingly. Towers are old news in the wizard world. She wants to know about the School.

  “Armwood Academy is for gifted kids,” I answer, chewing on airy berries. “You gotta have an IQ of 150 or better. The school psychologist says I’m so far over that it’s absurd.” Especially with words; my verbal score can’t be measured.

  Miss Granger thinks I have the makings of a great witch. A good witch, she adds hastily, not the boorish Death Eater sort.

  “My teacher puts a B on itch.” But Mrs. O’Sullivan is too smart to say it out loud. Hard to explain, but sometimes I sort of hear what people think. Meredith is a real little antichrister; she’d eat the Lamb of God, wool and all. Along with the yahoo IQ, I apparently have Attention Deficit Disorder and mild Disruptive Behavior Disorder, neither much appreciated by the staff of Harbour View Elementary.

  Hermione is slightly taller than me, but she easily stands in the cramped closet to pirouette and show off her sable academic gown. Her over-the-shoulder satchel is patterned with dandelion yellow stars and crescent moons. Just for me, the bag also displays anchors, a briny nod to Newfoundland. My people have been here on The Rock since Moses waded the Red Sea.

  “Moses was a wizard, dreadnought class, powerful like Dumbledore,” I inform my friend. “His staff could turn into a serpent.”

  Hermione wriggles her nose in disgust. She abhors serpents. Parseltongue devils, I’m told. She doesn’t realize it, but I can wordsling Parsel (and Klingon) from my eidetic memory. I’m not supposed to know I own a thousand gigabyte mind, but once Mom and the psychologist talked right in front of me, as though I were invisible and stupid.