by Curtis Hox
Terror set in when he realized he couldn’t breathe. He tried to move, imagining a giant weight pressing on his body. No response. No sensation other than the image and feel of the floor up against his face and the sound of his own gurgling. The last images Corbin Lyell saw were of the barbarian’s sandaled feet, walking across the bloodied stage.
* * *
Towns had only suggested who Corbin was, a whisper in the barbarian’s mind, an urge: The sorcerer who enslaved you.
Towns looked away in the last moment, sure of what was to happen. He didn’t see the act. Instead, having done his best to protect Dr. Sterling and Masumi and to reveal the treachery of Corbin Lyell, he struggled to ignore the feel of the barbarian’s fingers wrapping around Corbin’s neck.
One more thing to do.
He grabbed the monitoring device that sat atop a gurney on wheels. He plugged in the tube to the needle still taped to his arm, then hit the button to trigger the green stuff. Each time the medicine cycled into a new phase, the light would change and a switch underneath would release the drugs from the proper IV bag hanging from a hook.
He watched the stuff drip, then waited.
The hyper hallucinatory reality he was experiencing would quickly mellow and disappear altogether. Whatever drugs ended his cycle, they were designed to help him sleep peacefully. He had done this enough to know he had about twelve hours in which the green light would stay lit. Then it would click off and the release would close, and the drugs would stop, and he’d eventually awake hungry and thirsty and on edge in a room of blue.
Without realizing it, Towns climbed into the silent cocoon to sleep, still locked inside.
When they tried again to get in, he didn’t hear a thing.
* * *
One minute Dr. Sterling was watching the projection scan about, the next she was staring at an empty stage with a bloody sword and armor clanging to the floor. She stopped her timer from finishing again with three seconds to spare.
Brad helped her to her feet, said a few encouraging words, then escorted her away from the carnage. Masumi waited in the hallway outside the amphitheater, ashen-faced, shaking, and silent (her camera wisely hidden in her bag).
Bernard Corrigan approached, followed by two nonplussed campus police officers. Both stared wide-eyed. Neither held anything other than radios, which they kept using to provide redundant updates. The uproar of the exit had spilled outside as people had stampeded to get out of the building.
By the time Dr. Sterling, Brad, and Masumi left the amphitheater, that part of the building was empty, except for university staff and other personnel. A few individuals entered the amphitheater to see if they could help the wounded.
A man and a woman who had E.M.T. experience returned with the unbelieving looks of those who had never seen such wounds before.
“No survivors,” the woman said. “We need blankets.”
By the time local police arrived, the building had been cordoned off, and a manhunt was underway.
Corrigan had seen the entire thing, but even he couldn’t explain what had happened to the rogue actor. Corrigan had looked away for only a second, and the man was gone.
Everyone told the same story.
Dr. Sterling, of course, and Masumi, told less than they knew.
By the end of the day, Corrigan convinced the lead detective to call off the manhunt and to claim that Max Siegen was responsible. No one was going to contest this, mostly to avoid panic. Dr. Sterling knew no danger remained. Why scare the public? And Corrigan explained that Siegen was also deeply involved in Dr. Eliot Brandeis’s deaths.
Of course, the symposium was called off. In the end, Dr. Sterling did not have to answer questions and defend herself.
That is, not until a few weeks later.
EPILOGUE
Historians of the N.P.B. point to those pivotal summer weeks when Riodola University announced an F.G.O. at a demonstration and ended with a tragic symposium. At the center was Dr. Harriet Sterling standing before her peers in a dramatic show of theater that turned into a massacre.
Some people claimed that human society changed that summer because bleedover was made real, “and we didn’t even know it,” as one student said.
Even more inflammatory remarks were made. “Life will never be the same, thanks to that bitch.”
Or, “She should be burned at the stake.”
And even from those who couldn’t believe, “Fraud, fraud, fraud.”
The small pinch of activity that began with her Cultural Studies Department reverberated outward, made international headlines, then subsided into the information ether where old news goes to die. Culture science became a new academic discipline, although, investigated only by a small group of tenured faculty and their research assistants.
Most people going about their daily lives had no idea science or society had changed. Sure, the news occasionally mentioned some odd artifact of the N.P.B. creeping up in media. A sensation was caused when a lead character in a blockbuster movie accidentally wore a name tag that revealed the actor’s identity (undermining the very heart of the movie, and something the director swore was not in the final edit). Still, the reality of the N.P.B. had a few articulate voices, none more controversial than Dr. Harriet Sterling.
When Dr. Sterling’s closest associate, a graduate student, Masumi Yoshida, was asked for an explanation of what happened during the symposium, Masumi replied, “Have you seen the footage? I filmed it. I was there. It’s real.”
The initial aftermath of the symposium incident also reverberated throughout the entire university. Administrators cancelled classes for a week while they struggled to understand what had occurred. Dr. Sterling hired Bernard Corrigan’s law firm to handle her involvement and Brad Dellis to handle her security. When the authorities finally released information that the instigator (disgruntled Hexcom employee Max Siegen) had been killed by a distraught actor (whose name they couldn’t release because he/she was a student), the sensational story finally lost some of its steam in the news. However, Dr. Sterling knew she’d have to face the administration, even if the faculty steered clear of her now that Dr. Ross was gone. She struggled with what to tell them. She knew she had to find a satisfactory answer.
She sat at her desk in her basement office, thinking of what she would say. Summer session for cultural studies classes was nearing completion. In two weeks, the busy fall schedule would begin. Her office had finally been fully decorated and outfitted. She was happy down in the deepest part of the subbasement. In fact, with the door closed, she had no disturbances.
In her hands Hattie held a rectangular bronze plaque, the typical kind you see decorating the doors of any academic area. She’d had it made years ago, kept it tucked away in her drawer.
Culture Science Department
Dr. Harriet Sterling, PhD, Chair
Masumi would be here later in the day, with Towns.
Hattie would have them put it up on the door outside the library. Staff had already placed a frame on the door to hold the plaque. It was almost official. She, though, had to fight one last battle to get final approval, something she thought impossible after Corbin’s foolish arming of his projection. They had given her two weeks to recover and prepare.
* * *
A light rain fell as Hattie walked from the library to the administration buildings. She threaded through the quad along one of the oldest paths, this one lined in a hedgerow on one side and rows of maples on the other. She walked under a wide umbrella that hid her from any strollers, none of whom were out at this early hour and in this weather. The president and the dean, though, were waiting for her. The board and the regents would obviously take any recommendation from the administration. They didn’t even want to be in the same room with her.
When Hattie arrived, she didn’t have to wait.
The receptionist took her umbrella and then guided her to the conference room. The blinds were drawn. The president sat at one end of the table, patiently wai
ting, while Dean Edwards sat at a corner, as if the two of them had been whispering.
The receptionist shut the door.
“Have a seat, Dr. Sterling,” the president said.
Dean Edwards didn’t stand. “We hope you’re well.”
“Well enough.”
Hattie sat at the far end of the table.
“Everyone wants you out,” the president said.
“Can they do that?”
“They can vote to have your tenure revoked based on a clause in the regent’s bylaws. Yes, they can.”
Hattie hadn’t thought they’d go after her tenure.
“Will you let them?”
“Tell me why I shouldn’t.”
For a moment, anger threatened to turn her tranquil face into a sneer. She remained calm, feigning surprise.
“Okay, two things. I’ll tell you the truth of what happened, and you can make up your own minds. Second, I can guarantee my institute will make sizeable grants to the university on a regular basis.”
“Sizeable?” Dean Edwards asked.
The president wanted an explanation as well, but placed her hand on the dean’s hand. “Go ahead, Dr. Sterling, tell us.”
She began with her studio work. She didn’t go all the way back to the reading group, but she digressed a few times, enough to explain that she, Corbin, Eliot, and Stephan didn’t just casually know each other as college students—that what began years ago culminated in these last few weeks’ events.
She explained that Corbin Lyell had a serious problem and that he’d let his ambition and jealousy spin out of control. His attack on the library cost Alice Reynolds her life, and for this Hattie felt responsible, even if it wasn’t her fault. She had underestimated Corbin. The symposium, she explained, was out of her hands, as well, as they both knew, because Stephan Ross had wanted it as a platform to ridicule her. Even her suggestion that Corbin not be invited was viewed as a political move on her part. Stephan had thought she didn’t want to share the limelight with their old, eccentric friend. She, though, had come prepared with her own bleedover summoning.
Through the account, both the president and the dean sat impassively, listening to this most outrageous of stories from a full-tenured professor and departmental chair. Hattie spoke evenly and directly, with little emotion, almost as if she were explaining how she got to work everyday. When she began articulating what this meant for her theory of the N.P.B., they both understood she was voicing her new ideas of culture science.
Hattie flatly stated that the “representation of a thing is as important as the thing itself,” and that, “subjectivity and, in particular, mind must somehow be more than we can imagine. Of course, I speculate at this point, but I believe nature uses us to tell stories that it then brings into being. Or maybe it’s the other way around.”
They asked a few important questions about her method.
Hattie then clearly delineated her process for reading media interpolations and stitching combinations into frameworks. However, she failed to elucidate how projections, wards, and transitory bleedover ephemera work. She had no idea yet how her cooking timer generated her red goddess, other than the fact she wrote those elements into her story. Here, she admitted she must play the philosopher of science, instead of the scientist. She also failed to mention her portal.
“I have only one model and that is how the mind works. We create narratives that we experience along ranges of verisimilitude. We can remember a trip to the mountains and can relive it, although with much less sensory immediacy than the actual event. We can even shut our eyes and daydream and, maybe, recall some emotions and experiences with greater impact than a casual memory. Moreover, we can even dream, thereby coming closer to the most immersive experience. But, at this point, the dream often changes the experience. These ways of accessing memories via reconstructed narrative are paltry things compared to what happens with the N.P.B.”
“And what does happen?” the president asked.
“What happens is that some of us can bring our narratives to life.”
Both of her listeners realized they’d failed to ask the most cogent question.
How?
Hattie saw their displeasure, and smiled. “When the first modern humans stared into flames and saw that they flicker and burn and provide heat, did they know how?”
She had them, as she’d had Masumi. Of course they didn’t know how; it took thousands of years of human culture to build a scientific edifice that could support an understanding of chemical burning beyond the missteps, but sometimes useful ideas, of hermetic practice.
The president nodded that she understood.
If they forced Hattie out she would continue her work in elucidating both the what and the how, and Riodola would ultimately suffer a lack of funds.
“Tell us about these grants, Dr. Sterling.”
* * *
Hattie felt relief as she detailed plans for quarterly grants along a number of avenues that would fund a variety of initiatives in culture science. Both administrators nodded as they listened, both aware that she had made her political move.
Give me my department, and you get your money.
“How much, exactly?” the president asked.
“The institute will provide eighty percent over budget.”
Such a generous offer was beyond what Stephan Ross could have ever hoped to put on the table.
They asked her to step out a moment while they conferred. It lasted only five minutes, and she guessed that they both knew their decisions before she left the room. They kept her waiting just to make it look as if they’d actually deliberated.
When Hattie returned, the president simply said, “Hopefully, we can avoid any more investigations.”
“Of course.”
Hattie shook both their hands. “So, I can change my letterhead?”
The president finally smiled. “I’ll let the registrar know.”
* * *
By the time Hattie walked back to the library, the rain had stopped and the clouds began to clear for midmorning. She hurried to her office, where she found her plaque. She began polishing it again.
Finally, I can hang this on the door.
She placed it to the side, while she looked through her proposed class list, wondering who on faculty might be interested in working with her, maybe co-teaching a class, when she heard a knock.
She glanced at her computer monitor and saw Masumi and Towns standing outside. She hit a button on her desk and disengaged the electronic lock. Her students walked in together. Towns looked recovered. The distrust he’d displayed when his mother had been sick was replaced by his old eagerness.
“Sorry about everything,” he said. “Masumi said you wanted to see me.”
“Yes,” Hattie replied. “Very good. Now, Towns, do you have a favorite story, something you’d like to read again?” He looked at Masumi, who smiled.
“Told ya,” she said.
“No hurry,” Hattie said. “Take your time. When you’re ready.” She stood and grabbed her plaque. “I have something important that must be done.”
Both students looked anxious, as if she might ask them to walk through a portal or prepare for some other impossibility.
She handed the plaque to Masumi. “Put that on the front door of the library.”
Hattie then sat again. She had a number of messages to get to, one from Bernard Corrigan about consulting for his organization.
* * *
They left her alone, unaware of the significance of that plaque.
The field of culture science would be legitimated with a piece of bronze hanging from a door, but the real work would be done crossing between worlds and slowly, ever slowly, following intuition, generating hypotheses, predicting results, running experiments, and validating data. This would be kept from the world, at least for a time, until it could no longer deny the reality of bleedover.
THE END
Thank you for purchasing this book. If you en
joyed it, please leave a comment or review at the site of purchase. Check out my website at curtishox.com for new releases or contact me at [email protected].
About the author:
Curtis Hox is an English professor by day and a science fiction writer by night. He launched his debut novel, Bleedover, in Nov. 2011, and in 2012 he’s releasing his YA Transhuman Warrior Series. He’s also blogging his journey as a self-published author. He lives with his wife and two year old son, who often pretends to type on his keyboard.
Short stories:
“The Kafka Harrier”
“Repossession in Progress”
“The Red Sphere”
“Witch Fire”
Stand alone novels:
Bleedover
Chastener (coming soon)
Transhuman Warrior Series:
Rupture (coming soon)
Glitch (coming soon)
Dominion (coming soon)
Connect with me online:
http://www.curtishox.com
[email protected]
http://www.twitter.com/curtishox
SPECIAL THANKS to my wife, Rose, for working so hard on this project. She was with me every step of the way, without a moment of doubt. Thanks to Andres Carlstein for all the hours he spent workshopping and critiquing and for being such a good cheerleader. Every writer needs a friend and reader like Andres. I guess I got lucky on that one. Thanks to Zofin Taher for being a beta reader and reminding me that Towns and Masumi needed more than just a little flirting. Thanks to Stephanie Mooney for designing such a great cover. Also, thanks to everyone at Gotham Writers’ Workshop who combed through this and helped me shape it, as well as fellow author Peter Spenser for going far above what is ever expected of a reader and providing a needed round of copy-editing (he also wrote the dictionary definition of bleedover, the noun, at the beginning of the novel). And, finally, a huge thanks to editors Michael Carr for insights that saved Bleedover from being such a mess and showing me how to get my characters out of their heads and Derek Prior for providing a much needed (and critical) round of copy-editing.