by W D County
“Nothing I’m ready to share.” He took a breath. “Look, Laura, whatever you want to discuss with the patient can wait until morning.”
“He tried to kill himself.”
He wrung his hands in the air. “Of course he did! I warned all of you that he’s depressed. Didn’t stop anyone from treating him like an object. It sent him over the top, made him snap. Then Miles practically kills him. Good God.” He shook his head in disgust.
“I agree totally. It should have been handled differently. But Barry’s situation isn’t going to improve with handcuffs. He’s already confined, helpless, suicidal. We need to show that we care about him—not only the taint.”
His eyes bored into her. “What do you suggest?”
“You’ve seen how important religion is to him. Let’s return his Bible.”
“Gordon left orders...”
“He’s not a care-giver. We are. Barry needs compassion, not punishment. He asked me to bring him his Bible. It’s a chance for us to build trust. Only you, Gordon, and Miles know the access code. Those two won’t help me. Will you?”
Tom gave her a hard look, but she sensed a willingness beneath the glare. She pushed. “Being tied up and alone with nothing to occupy his mind worsens the depression minute by minute.” She was ready to force a smile, but it came easily. “Where’s his Bible?”
His face softened. “I told Gordon the cuffs weren’t needed. The vault is practically suicide-proof. Kapoor should have known better than to take a glass mirror inside. And Miles—what a hothead.” He sighed. “I’ll deliver the Bible and take off the cuffs. No need for you to get on Gordon’s bad side.”
“Has to be me. Barry’s ready to open up. I know how to encourage it.”
Tom cocked his head. “You didn’t strike me as a rule breaker.”
“I need to do what’s right.”
He grinned. “Gordon’s getting too big for his britches. Do him good to remember that the best leaders listen to their advisors.” He retrieved the Bible from a locker and handed it to her. “Let’s go.”
***
Early to bed, early to rise. I had just turned off the bedside lamp when a light knock sounded at the door. I switched the lamp back on, rolled off the bunk, and cracked open the door.
Steampunk smiled up at me, aviator goggles perched on the brim of a leather top hat adorned with silver buckles. “Hello, Mr. Reardon. I hope I’m not disturbing you but we need to talk about why you didn’t tell anybody and whether we should because the taint is not only intelligent, it has the ability to affect physical objects, I mean, the ability to not interact with physical objects, like the mirror that went right through—”
I pulled her inside. “Not in the hall.”
She nodded, the hat bobbing with delayed emphasis. She paused on the second dip of her head, then lifted her eyes to mine. “Oh, I did disturb you.”
I looked down, worried that private Miles might be peeking out from my boxers. He wasn’t. Hadn’t even pitched a tent. Normally I’m not self-conscious about clothes, but I felt awkward wearing just a tee and boxers while she stood fully dressed. Her smorgasbord of Victorian bodice, khaki pants, and knee-high leather boots with stacks of watch buckles looked oddly attractive. I reached for a pair of pants. “Nah, just getting ready for bed.”
She struck a little girl pose—one boot flat on the floor, the other one toe down, head cocked, and a finger resting at the corner of her mouth. “At dinner you laughed when Laura came up with the word ‘taint.’ Why?”
“No particular reason,” I lied.
“You thought it was funny. No one else did.”
“Look, it’s kind of inappropriate for polite conversation.”
“I love dirty jokes.” Her smile egged me on.
“Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. There’s a part on the body some people find erogenous between the... ah, genitals and the... ah, anus.” I took a breath. “So it ain’t the pussy and it ain’t the asshole. It ain’t. Taint. Get it?”
She frowned. “Little boy humor.”
“You asked.”
She dropped her teasing pose, though I still found it hard to take Steampunk seriously. Especially when she spoke in run-on sentences, which she launched into. “I think the taint is trying to communicate with us, which isn’t good or bad on its own, but that’s the point, we don’t know its intent, so it could be warning us or threatening us or asking for directions to Alpha Centuri and there’s no way to answer it.”
“Answer a rash?”
She frowned with clear irritation. “It’s not a rash and you know it. Or maybe you don’t. But I do. The taint is intelligent or at least represents something intelligent with powers we can’t imagine since we don’t know what we don’t know. But we saw it fold space or alter what it means to be solid. That broken glass went right through his arm. We both saw it. The taint’s protecting him.”
“Why didn’t you point that out when it happened? Or voice your concerns over dinner?”
Steampunk seemed to deflate. “It didn’t feel like the right time. The manipulation of matter seems to put the taint mostly in Dr. Kapoor’s field of study, but she’s the least open-minded of the team—actually, hardly anyone is open-minded, but the point is that Gordon would give her priority, and I think her experiments would be dangerous, kind of like tinkering with the scaffolding while Michelangelo is on top painting the Sistine Chapel. The painter will get pissed off. We need to know more about the taint before we mess with it.”
I shrugged, trying to project nonchalance. “You continue to study it like the government wants. Knowledge is power, right?” I hoped she wouldn’t see through my sham. An enemy I couldn’t see scared the shit out of me.
She studied me. “You think it’s dangerous, too. But we need to study it without letting it spread. We need to know its intentions. I don’t think its effects are limited to eating color.”
“Look, I’m just the muscle. You’re one of the experts. Talk to the Kingpin, express your concerns, let him decide what to do.”
She raised a brow. “Kingpin?”
“I mean Maxwell.”
“He thinks I’m an airhead. But you’re as grounded as a granite mountain. He’ll listen to the two of us together.”
“Listen about what? Are you saying now that you want Maxwell to know?” The memory of the sharp glass passing harmlessly through Choirboy’s arm worried me as much as it did her. The thought of making wild claims without proof scared me more. Hauser and Maxwell would think I was making another attempt to get out of this assignment.
Steampunk nodded.
“Well, I’m not. It happened so fast, and I don’t see colors. Mirrors distort things. Maybe we didn’t see what we thought we did.” The lie twisted my guts the way a pretzel maker twists dough, but the look in Steampunk’s eyes hurt worse. “The surveillance camera didn’t show a thing,” I added lamely. Fuck, I should have told Hauser about the shard, but I hadn’t and if I brought it up now my credibility with him was shot. I turned off my feelings so I didn’t have to look away from Steampunk in shame.
She left without another word. I shucked off my pants, flopped onto the bunk, and stared at the ceiling for what seemed like eternity. Sometimes a man has to lie to preserve self-respect, dancing around something so he won’t appear cowardly. But Zita saw through it, which blew away my self-respect like autumn leaves in a nor’easter. I’d made a hell of a dumbass mistake. Or maybe not. It’d be worse if she saw me as some kind of hero.
Unable to sleep, I pulled the blank MMPI from the trash can and grabbed a pen. I considered lying, as it might get me booted off the team and back into the field where I belonged. But then I decided that telling the truth had a better chance of showing how fucked up I was.
***
Laura pointed to the video monitor. The lights were off in the vault, and the cameras should have been almost totally dark, with only the infrared monitor showing an outline of a warm body lying in bed. Instead, all the vid
eo monitors showed a clear image of Barry, thanks to a faint blue light emanating from the taint.
“Bioluminescence,” Tom said. “More evidence that the taint has a biological origin, though Kapoor insists it’s some kind of radiation.”
He thumbed the intercom. “Barry, you have a visitor. I’m turning on the lights.”
“Go away.”
“Be nice to her.”
They donned protective clothing and entered the airlock. Tom agreed to give her privacy with the patient, and remained in the airlock while she went inside the vault.
Barry sat on the bed, fully awake. The key to the cuffs still hung on the wall out of his reach. Laura took the key and freed him, grateful she only had to touch his unaffected arm. She retreated a step.
He rubbed his wrist and then stared at her with eyes that seemed able to penetrate her dark glasses and protective clothing. The taint covered half his face, just as it had earlier, but the pattern looked subtly different. She repressed a shiver and the pang of guilt that followed in its wake. If the taint frightened her, how much worse must it be for him? If—and such a big if—the taint were real and not an illusion. She’d start making that determination tomorrow.
“You’re brave coming here alone.”
“Doc’s outside, watching.” She forced a smile to her lips but of course he couldn’t see it. Protective clothing blunted her body language. She ought to compensate by sitting beside him, but couldn’t yet summon the courage. “But I don’t have anything to be afraid of, do I?”
Barry watch her from the bed. Silently evaluating her? Probably.
“We are afraid for you, Barry.” Establishing rapport with Barry was essential. If the taint were an elaborate hoax, he had to be in on it. If the taint were real, Barry was both the victim and the key to unlocking its secrets. If this were a mass hallucination—well, that was the most difficult scenario to unravel. She held her breath, stepped forward, and took hold of his tainted hand. It felt solid. Real. She let out her breath.
“I brought you something.” With her free hand she reached into her pocket. A flicker of interest animated his face.
She held out the book. His eyes widened and he pulled free of her touch to seize the book with both hands. The cover remained black, but the gold letters of the words “Holy Bible” turned gray, as did the gilt edges of its pages. His fingers caressed the cover.
She hesitantly touched his shoulder. “Doc said the color would add a tenth of a percent to your total color accumulation. It’s worth a hundred times that, isn’t it?”
The rapidly swirling colors on his face didn’t mask his gratitude. “Thank you, Laura. Thank you very much.” He opened the book, carefully turning a few pages. His gaze lingered on Genesis chapter 37. “I owe you a gift, Laura. I need to work on it.” He looked up. “You’re tired. So am I. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Of course,” she said, and turned to go. She’d made a good start on building rapport.
He called out, “You will dream tonight, Laura. Bring it with you tomorrow.”
The command reverberated in her mind, filling her with disquiet. Then the Pavlok sent a shock through her arm, and she bolted from the chamber.
Chapter 11
Like a song stuck looping in a listener’s mind, the color patterns of the tesseract played incessantly in the memory of each team member. Unlike a song, its patterns largely went unnoticed, relegated to the fringe of conscious awareness. Only when sleep stilled the raucous cacophony of daily thoughts did the Awareness detect these patterns and insinuate itself into dreams.
Gordon Maxwell dreamt of a huge multicolored knot dangling from the rocky ceiling of a cave. It spun slowly, capturing his attention as the serpentine surface wove ever-shifting patterns of infinite subtlety.
What are you?
Gordon wore the garb of a Macedonian general, complete with leather and bronze breastplate and a shining helmet sporting red plumage. The greatest minds in the world, including Aristotle, served as his advisors. Most of them believed this knot to be a clever device built by the Greeks. Others said it was a trap set by the Egyptians or an offering left by the Persians. Gordon knew the construction of this artifact required skill beyond any earthly power.
He also knew that whoever undid the knot would rule the world, but thus far its complexity had stymied would-be conquerors. The fates allowed no advance knowledge of the outcome. The knot had no beginning; it had no end. It had no solution, for the gods created this puzzle to confound humanity. The rotation stopped as if pondering the intentions of the human.
Gordon drew his sword and slashed the knot in two. Pieces fell like colored ribbons, confetti for a parade welcoming a ruler destined to usher in a new age. Problem solved. Let others analyze the pieces. He was a leader, a mover and shaker of the world.
The dream faded. The Awareness moved on.
***
Sonja Kapoor dreamt of a large, multicolored hypercube hovering a few centimeters above the floor of the lab. It rotated slowly within a surrounding array of sensors and cameras. The patches of color glittered with refracted light like facets of some enormous jewel or a composite eye of a gigantic insect.
What are you?
She wore a simple white lab coat and carried a terabyte smartpad in her hand. As senior scientist, it was her responsibility—no, her opportunity—to study the artifact, discern its principles of operation, and advance the level of human knowledge.
This promised to be a huge advance. Some facets of the tesseract displayed tinted views of subatomic particle interactions, magnified a trillion times and slowed by an equivalent factor. It offered an unprecedented insight to the fundamental nature of matter at the very smallest scale.
Other facets of the hypercube seemed calibrated for the opposite extreme. They showed stars, galaxies, entire clusters of galaxies, all of which could be shifted, rotated, shrunk, magnified, and moved forward or back in time. Dark matter and dark energy appeared in false color. She could peer inside black holes.
Still other facets of the tesseract showed images too strange for her to fathom. Who built this device, and why? Was it a probe from another world? A discarded toy by an alien child? A misplaced compass of a cosmic explorer?
Whatever its origin and purpose, the device would do more to advance science than any other discovery in history. Physics taught that every force in nature came with a set of equations and a physical constant, an unchanging numeric value that anchored this universe in some way. Such symbols and formulas described the building blocks of reality. The tesseract added a whole new package of blocks.
She tingled with anticipation at discovering new fundamental forces, rebuilding the standard model of quantum physics and seamlessly uniting it with Einstein’s general theory of relativity. She was the consummate scientist, eager to discover knowledge of the universe.
The dream faded. The Awareness moved on.
***
Nathan Lee dreamt of the tesseract floating in midair above the graceful dance of the Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas. The colored patterns on its too-many-for-3D sides glittered like colored diamonds and cast a hypnotic spell over the crowd.
What are you?
He stood alone on an elevated outdoor stage, dressed in his royal-blue satin suit and illuminated by spotlights as he strove to bewitch and bedazzle the writhing, swarming multitude that filled the streets and walkways of the strip from Harmon Avenue to Flamingo Road and beyond.
He felt locked in a symbiotic embrace, for he needed adoration as much as they needed entertainment. He also feared the crowd, for their adoration depended on the willing suspension of disbelief. They wanted magic, real magic, and he specialized in trickery.
Real supernatural power emanated from the tesseract—power that could be tapped and directed to accomplish amazing things. Hints of such results took shape in the hypercube’s myriad facets. He saw himself levitating cars, foretelling futures, reading minds.
Genuine magic—paranormal abili
ties—existed. He felt it in the fiber of his being. He’d travelled the world searching for proof from psychics, bokors, and mystics. Tantalizing hints abounded, but proof eluded him. He’d debunked so many hoaxes that everyone believed him to be a hardcore skeptic.
The tesseract held the key to unlock hidden powers of the mind. The crowd would watch in awe as he performed impossible feats that were no longer tricks. He was a wizard born to a world without magic, but that was about to change. He could hear the people cheer.
The dream faded. The Awareness moved on.
***
Tom Harrison dreamt of the tesseract floating above a pond in a desert oasis. A few feet beyond the untroubled palms, wind howled in frustration, unable to disturb the zone of tranquility. He staggered to the water, hoping to ease his parched throat. He drank from the pool and stared at the tesseract’s reflection, as gray as his own face and dirty scrubs.
What are you?
The reflection showed the shifting faces of the hypercube, each a murky window to other times and places, many of which he remembered. Some showed hospital beds, hundreds of beds, filled with people suffering every known (and many unknown) maladies. He watched versions of himself struggle to keep pace with gruesome morbidity. For every patient cured, two died. Other windows showed other places of equal horror: a field hospital in a war zone with a ward dedicated to amputations; a makeshift Ebola clinic in Sierra Leone with waiting rooms dedicated to the dying.
The images taunted him with the ultimate futility of medicine. He turned his gaze upward to curse the tesseract.
The words died on his lips. Vibrant colors seized his attention and disarmed his frustration. These windows showed scenes of hope and healing. They showed the taint as a source of a medicine more effective than any vaccine or antibiotic. It cured cancer. It regrew missing limbs. It restored the minds of Alzheimer’s victims. No illness, no injury, no defect was beyond the healing power of the taint.
He rose to his feet and lifted his arms. I am a healer. Help me to mend the broken and to cure the diseased.