Isle of Noise

by Rachel Tonks Hill

  ****

  Dear Mum and Dad,

  This is kinda hard to explain, and I'm really not thinking clearly, so if it's at all confusing please bear with me. I want to try to explain to you what I'm about to do, what I've already done. You see, by the time you get this letter I'm gonna be dead.

  Bloody hell that sounds dramatic, but it's also true.

  I don't really want you to be sad, but you're my mum and dad, of course you're going to be sad. I mean, how could you be anything but devastated when your only child has taken their own life? I really am truly sorry about what you're going to go through, what you're already going through, but this is something I have to do.

  See, I had an accident at work. A few months ago when I dropped off the map, my boss told you I was working on a project abroad. That wasn't true at all. I was in a medically induced coma as a result of this accident. And because of the nature of my job they didn't want you to know about it. I haven't really been myself since it happened but to even begin to explain what's wrong with me I need to explain what my job actually is. And some of it is a bit fantastical.

  Or maybe I don't need to explain it. My head hurts too much to think. My job isn't quite what you were told. Some shady stuff goes down within the Institute and it led directly to my accident. There's someone else inside my head with me and it's killing me. It might not make much sense to you but it's the truth.

  I'm in pain all the time. I can't sleep any more. and I just need it to stop. I'm sorry. I don't want to hurt you, but it's best this way. The daughter you know and love won't last much longer anyway.

  I love you,

  Natima

  ****

  There, she'd written it down as best she could. She knew they wouldn't understand. She desperately wanted them to, but they wouldn't. Natima left the sealed envelope in her apartment.

  The next morning she went into work as usual. She spent the morning clearing out her desk and finished off bits of paperwork. She shredded anything personal. Natima didn't want to leave too much for other people to do after she was gone. No one was suspicious that she'd spent all morning holed up in her office doing very little. That had been her mode of operation for so long now that it seemed normal.

  By the time lunch rolled around she was pretty much done, so she tidied everything up and left the office for the last time. A few colleagues spotted her and she swapped pleasantries with them for a while. She tried to slip out quietly but her boss Rhonda caught her for a quick word.

  "You're looking better today Natima."

  "Thanks, I'm feeling better." It was the truth, delivered with a genuine smile. Now that she knew where her path led she felt at peace. Her head was hardly bothering her.

  "I'm glad to hear it," said Rhonda. "We- I've been worried about you for a while. You haven't really been yourself since the incident with Eileen Li. I was going to ask you to take some time off work, but if you're doing better I guess you don't need to."

  "I don't think I need time off. Things got to me for a while, but I've got everything in hand now."

  Rhonda smiled broadly.

  "That's great Natima. I'm really pleased for you. Well, I'll let you get your lunch."

  "Thanks Rhonda. And in case I haven't said it before, I just wanted you to know that your support has meant the world to me over the last few months. You've been a great boss."

  The two women parted with a hug and a smile. Natima headed to the stairwell, just as she normally did on her lunch break. Only today she climbed up, instead of down.

  The building Natima worked in was one of the newer ones the Institute owned. It was also one of their flagship facilities. As such it was an impressive architectural achievement, well over ten storeys high. Access to the roof was easy; people would sneak up here for a quickie after the Christmas party.

  As Natima stepped out onto the rooftop she lifted her face to the sky. The sun was out, and there wasn't a cloud to be seen. It reminded her of the hospital garden inside Eileen's mind. The one she'd seen every night in her dreams, until she stopped sleeping.

  Natima smiled.

  "It's over, Eileen," she said quietly to herself. "Four years of limbo are nearly over. Just a few moments more."

  Around the perimeter of the roof there were railings to stop people careening over the edge. Natima climbed over the railing and stood right on the precipice. She leaned forward and looked down; it was a big drop. But it was her salvation, the thing that would end her pain. She just had to be brave a few moments more.

  Natima Kanakaredes lifted her face to the sun, savouring its life giving warmth for the last time. And then she let go.

  ***

  Interlude 3

  Begin transcript.

  Begin recording. Dictation by [redacted]. Session 26 in case number 552, the investigation into the organisation known only as “The Institute”. Notes on a possibly related incident, the death of [redacted].

  I was alerted to the incident by an article in the local newspaper. [redacted] was a talented young scientist with a promising career in experimental neuroscience. Her death was initially reported as an accident. She fell from the roof of a fifteen story building and died instantly on impact. Death was later confirmed as suicide when the parent's came forward with the note. The incident initially piqued my attention due to the suspicious lack of details about the victim's place of employment despite the incident occurring at her workplace. I did some digging and managed to turn up the address but very little about the company who owns it. There is no information on who officially owns the building, nor on its actual purpose. As far as the publicly available information is concerned it has sat empty since its construction less than a decade ago.

  Having obtained the address I went to investigate the site for myself. There is no sign of the accident or anything else really. The building is indeed as empty as the paperwork suggests. But more than that it is abandoned. There are hundreds of labs and offices in the building but no sign of people or furniture, and nothing to indicate what the building might have been used for. The amount of dust on the floor suggests that it was abandoned recently, but establishing an exact time frame is impossible. The only thing I am certain of is that it occurred sometime after [redacted]'s death. Whatever the circumstances surrounding her suicide, it spooked the institute enough to pack up and move to another site.

  Case 552, session 27.

  I have now spoken to the victim's parents, [redacted] and [redacted], and what I've learned is extremely concerning. Their daughter worked at the Institute for well over a year and they knew almost nothing about what she did. [Redacted] even disappeared for a few months at one point and her employers said she was on a work trip abroad. I've now seen the suicide note, and that contradicts the official line. It seems the victim was in a coma after some kind of accident and this may have led directly to her death. There is also a reference to someone else being inside her head. This is the first major clue I've unearthed about what the Institute actually does. It's exciting but also extremely disturbing. I need to investigate this further.

  Session 34.

  I managed to hack into some of their systems. Or more accurately managed to use [redacted]'s log-in details. She seems to have been a fairly low level employee but what I had access to is mind boggling. These people have been doing experiments on people's brains for over a century now. Somehow they've developed the ability to put someone inside another person's mind. This must be related to the accident that ultimately cost [redacted] her life. “There's someone else inside my head” she said. I didn't know what that meant but now I do. Was it truly an accident, or was this done to her on purpose. I don't know, not yet.

  The conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with what I've uncovered about the Institute. We knew they were some sort of rogue organization but we had no idea really. These guys are operating outside of the law, international conventions and all ethical guidelines I've ever come across, and I've barely scratched the surface.
Who knows how powerful they really are. Someone has to stop them.

  Session 39.

  They're on to me. I thought I'd been so careful when I accessed their systems but they must have had security protocols I didn't know about. I'm not safe any more. but the public need to know what I know. If you're listening to this, please take it to the police, the media, anybody. Just make sure this gets out. They need to be stopped.

  [Sound of a door being kicked down]

  Shit. They're here.

  [Here follows several seconds of heavy breathing and the sounds of rapid movement followed by a single gunshot]

  [Unknown male voice] Turn that bloody thing off will you?

  [Sound of footsteps, then a strange high pitched noise]

  [Hereafter only static]

  End transcription.

  Note to employees: we need to be more vigilant about keeping people like this away from our work. We can't afford another security breach like this one. While we're revisiting the Kanakeredes case, has anyone worked out what that rumbling noise was she described? I seem to recall it being mentioned the last time we had a coma patient. Can we get someone onto that?

  ***

  Anomaly: Claire

  Emily Cooper

  Gemma was worried, and it wasn’t her usual new patient worry, or even her what-will-I-find-when-I-get-home worry. This wasn’t a new patient. She already knew what was inside this man’s head. She knew she wouldn’t be shocked, but what she was about to do still scared her.

  “Shall we give it a go?” he asked, looking up at her from his chair. Mark was a young man, not long out of university. He had the distinctly crumpled look of a man who owns an iron – but doesn’t use it. And he was eager to begin.

  “Yes,” she replied. “There’s a treatment room ready for you. Please follow me.”

  Mark stood, and he followed her to the door. She felt him looking at the back of her head as they walked, as he rolled up his sleeves. She led him through the chilly hospital corridors, their shoes squeaking on the polished floor. They stopped at a red door and Gemma let Mark inside.

  He stood in the doorway, his eagerness gone. “Are they old dentist’s chairs?”

  “They do look at bit like that. But no, they’re built specially. Yours is the middle one.” She waited. The chair’s fabric was made of a stiff plastic. It was half dentist’s recliner and half chaise longue. But that wasn’t what Mark was looking at, Gemma knew it. “We only use these chairs for longer sessions. What if you fell out? You don’t sleep walk – do you?”

  Mark nodded and pressed his lips together in a thin line as he moved forwards. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

  “What if you walked off?” Gemma thought, ‘What if you left the institute and carried our minds away within your own?’

  “Good point,” Mark said. His confidence returned as he buckled his legs into the straps, but there was a deliberate slowness that gave him away. Gemma set down her clipboard and helped him with the arms.

  Someone tapped on the door and – without waiting – entered. “Hi.” It was a young man with a white lab coat hanging from his thin shoulders and suit trousers that were too big for him. A leather jacket and jeans would have fitted him better.

  “Ian, get in here,” Gemma said. “Mark, this is Ian, my assistant.”

  As the men nodded at each other, Gemma noticed that there couldn’t be more than a few years between them.

  “Alright, I’m going to dim the lights,” Ian said as he flipped the switch. He didn’t wait for Gemma to get into her own chair, but grabbed an ornament from a nearby shelf and threw himself down into his own seat. It was a metronome, a tool dreaded by many children with musical instruments.

  Ian pushed the needle to one side, “Ready?” and let go. The needle swung to the other side with a ‘tick’. Gemma hastily sat down and buckled herself in. Her chair only had one buckle around her waist, but she still had to rush to sit down as Ian dragged a side table into the centre of the room and placed the metronome on it. He counted the slow ticking noises, “Ten, nine, eight...” and all three of them watched the weight on the end of the needle. “...seven, six, five...”

  Gemma wished she hadn’t done up the belt from her chair so tightly around her waist. She felt bloated, heavy, but was already too drowsy to move. She didn’t hear the final numbers of the countdown, and nor did Mark. They were already asleep.

  * * * *

  I was lost in a storm of memories. Characters from cinema trips and late night TV stood talking to old school friends, none of them realising that they didn’t know each other – until I thought about it, and the scene changed into a racing series of colours and images I wasn’t fast enough to catch. My mind raced, with me running after it with a butterfly net woven too loose to catch anything. Instead of running with the images, I stood still and tried to imagine a tide, washing at a shore. It was a technique I’d used last time I was at the institute, but it still wasn’t easy. I turned the torrent into a lake, the lake into a pond, and the pond into the drip, drip, drip of a leaking tap. And finally, I was in control.

  I saw Ian first, dressed exactly has he had been in the treatment room, except that his cheeks held a green tinge. “You haven’t been in this job long, have you?” I couldn’t stop myself saying the words. They escaped as soon as I thought them.

  “Shut it,” he replied, and turned away.

  I put a hand to my stomach. As I moved I felt a gentle pressure around my wrists, as though I were wearing a watch on each arm. The pressure was also at my waist, my knees and ankles, but I didn’t feel sick. Not like Ian, who would have to wait several hours before he could wipe any vomit from his chin, and was trying not to think about it.

  “Where’s Gemma?” I asked. As soon as I thought about her the question escaped from my lips and she appeared in front of us, one hand clutching a green rug – which turned out to be a carpet of meadow beneath her. The last time I had seen a meadow like this, Claire had been there, raging and spitting. It hadn’t been attractive. “Are you trying to provoke me?”

  “I read your file. It mentioned that this was a particular trigger of yours.”

  Ian’s face went from green to white. “And you opened with this? Without so much as a hello, how are you?”

  His words captured my outrage and gave them a voice.

  Gemma shrugged, “I thought this might be the quickest way to get results.”

  My thoughts began to slide again, spilling an avalanche of images onto the grass beneath our feet. Mundane thoughts, secrets, bits of rumour – it was all there. I caught glimpses of painful things I thought were long forgotten, but had known they were still within me somewhere.

  “That’s enough, Mark,” Gemma warned, and stood up. But I wasn’t done. My eyes stung and prickled. Photographs flew in on an imaginary wind like autumn leaves. Hundreds of them, too many to count. It didn’t stop there. Soon the flood of memories I’d had under control was back. Gemma began to disappear under them, and above all the commotion, I heard a small sob.

  It was Ian. He looked paler than ever. Insubstantial. An earthquake began, somewhere in the back of my mind, shaking our surrounds. I took control and shook the debris out of view, and out of my mind.

  “That was stupid,” Ian said. I couldn’t help but agree... and caught myself on that thought. Good cop, bad cop. I didn’t want them seeing that thought, so I focused on the grass. If I thought it aloud, they’d change tactic.

  “If you wanted to know about her, why didn’t you just ask?” I asked, trying to sound casual and unconcerned. It didn’t work, but Gemma dropped her gaze and seemed embarrassed. “Don’t you want to help me? Isn’t that what it’s all about?”

  “I think that’s enough for today,” Gemma said, and clapped her hands. The sound was like thunderbolts. Like the switching on of a furious light bulb.

  * * * *

  Gemma’s hands felt raw, as though she had just slapped a brick wall with both palms. She looked down. Her
arms where exactly where they had been for the last half hour, resting on her lap, loosely crossed.

  “What was all that about?”

  Gemma looked up. Mark was glowering from his chair. Even though he was the one restrained and she was his psychiatrist. “I thought our best chance would be to call her out.” She could see he was thinking about the logic of this decision. “Stirring up the emotions you link with Claire could be the key to getting her back. I thought I’d push a few buttons, break down a few barriers, and take a short cut.”

  “Your short cut could have cost me my sanity.”

  Probably, Gemma thought, he knows what he’s talking about. He’s probably even read the same textbooks I have. Aloud she said “No, I don’t think so. Not under our supervision.”

  “What makes you think that Claire will come back if you make me angry? I’ve tried all sorts to get her to come back. But she’s too stubborn.” Mark’s shoulders fell slightly, and were no longer pressed against his restraints.

  “Tell me then. What’s she like?” Gemma unbuckled herself and lent forwards. She noticed that Ian had vanished. The buckles of his chair were undone, and a vague unpleasant smell tinted the air.

  “She was the bit of me that doesn’t work. She was just... playful, like a cat.” A tiny smile lit Mark’s face as he spoke.

  “Past tense?”

  Mark’s smile disappeared. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her.” He chewed his lip. “It’s not like losing your Mum or Dad, or even a friend. You’ve still got a photograph or some of their belongings. I’ve just got memories, and after a while, you start to forget what it was like... other than the judging for having an imaginary friend. But she was more than that.” He looked up at Gemma. They’d spoken together mind-to-mind, but this was somehow more personal. “She’s the better part of me. That’s who Claire is.”